The 2022 Call of Duty League offseason has been nothing short of a bloodbath. From surprise announcements that shocked the entire community to teams assembling their best-ever roster, the 2023 CDL is shaping up to be the best season yet.
It just so happens that this upcoming season is the first time in the CDL era that a sequel in the Call of Duty series will be played. Modern Warfare 2 is rumored to play extremely similarly to Modern Warfare 2019. As a result of this, some players could be in for a tremendous bounce-back season.
During the mess that was the Vanguard season, some players experienced a down year compared to their usual performances. Kill/death ratios were down across the board and players that were former top performers suddenly fell to the bottom of the pack. While not all of these players will experience a resurgence in the CDL, we believe three players are primed to turn in a dominant 2023 season.
1. Arcitys – LA Guerrillas
Alec “Arcitys” Sanderson was the story of the 2022 offseason (at least after OpTic Texas revealed they were sticking together). Arcitys was dropped at the start of free agency and eventually was traded to the LA Guerrillas by Atlanta FaZe. Some fans believe Arcitys was dropped due to OpTic’s surprise announcement, but Atlanta players have stated that internal issues were largely to blame. Regardless of those supposed issues, Arcitys had arguably the worst season of his career in 2022, which seemingly made it easier to drop him once the offseason arrived.
However, there were a few factors that plagued Arctiys’ ability to perform well in 2022, at least from a statistical standpoint. For starters, he was playing the AR position with the CDL’s undisputed MVP in McArthur “Cellium” Jovel. With Cellium consistently playing the AR position so well, Arcitys didn’t have nearly as many chances to drop massive amounts of kills. In addition, Arcitys was presumably tasked with the “down and dirty” role that saw him pick up objective time and not focus on slaying as much. In this role, slaying isn’t as important, which likely led to Arcitys finishing with negative scorelines most of the time.
In 2023, however, Arcitys will be the main AR on a young LA Guerrillas squad. He’ll also be playing the sequel to a game he was prolific at (MW2019). With all of these factors taken into account, Arcitys should be in for a much stronger season in the 2023 CDL.
2. Shotzzy – OpTic Texas
To say that Anthony “Shotzzy” Cuevas-Castro had a poor 2023 season would be an exaggeration. Shotzzy didn’t have a terrible season, as he finished the year with above a 1.00 KD and consistently led OpTic to map/match wins. However, by his standards, Shotzzy didn’t perform as well as he had in previous years, especially towards the end of the season.
Luckily, he’ll soon be playing the sequel to the game in which he won the MVP award. Shotzzy was utterly dominant in MW2019, winning an MVP award as well as CDL Champs. There’s no reason to expect anything different from him during MW2, at least statistically. He’ll also presumably be playing on an OpTic squad that won’t be plagued by constant roster shifts, which was a key factor in his less-than-stellar 2022 season.
3. MajorManiak – F/A
While Mike “MajorManiak” Szymaniak doesn’t currently have a CDL team (at the time of writing), he’s rumored to be on the Florida Mutineers’ roster. This was the team he ended the 2022 season with and it seems he will be back to lead a team of young phenoms in 2023.
MajorManiak had an up-and-down 2022 season that was marred by his inability to perform in the respawn modes. He was a prolific Search and Destroy player as always, but his Hardpoint and Control performances weren’t as strong as they had been in seasons past. A main reason for this decline in play was the fact that Vanguard was an extremely fast-paced game. As fans know, MajorManiak plays a slower AR role — and it seemed like he had difficulty keeping up with enemies on the map at times.
While Modern Warfare 2 will likely also be a quicker game, MajorManiak had one of his best professional seasons during the MW2019 season. While it helped that he played on a stacked Atlanta FaZe roster, MajorManiak proved he belonged in the CDL during that season. We believe that a roster of quick SMGs around him on Florida will lead to a better statistical season.
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