Atlanta FaZe is one of the best teams in the Call of Duty League, being at the top of the leaderboard for the 2021 season for almost the entire year thus far. That is not looking to change anytime soon, either, with the third Atlanta FaZe Major win during the recent Stage 4 Major tournament.

Stage 4 was one of the strangest tournaments to date, with surprises around every corner and teams starting to fit into their final places for the Call of Duty League 2021 season. Some teams excelled after previous failures, teams who suddenly dropped in quality, and others who just remained the same. 

Regardless, the three weeks of group play culminated in the Stage 4 Major that has now concluded with a winner awarded a ton of prize money and league points. With it now done, there is only one stage left in the 2021 season before the playoffs and championship tournament begins. 

That said, those of you who have missed out on all of the crazy action and surprises that happened during the Stage 4 Major can still enjoy the matches after the fact on the Call of Duty League YouTube channel. Or, you can check out our full recap of what happened, including the third Atlanta FaZe Major win. 

There were four days of events during the Major tournament, ending the fourth stage on a bang. Like every other Major before it, the upper and lower brackets in the tournament with the bottom bracket had a single-elimination format while the upper bracket losses moved the team to the bottom. 

The Stage 4 Major began with the first set of matches from both brackets, with the first round getting off to a crazy start. It all began with the bottom teams in the league, Seattle Surge, and London Royal Ravens, taking on one another in the event. 

It is worth noting before moving forward that the Stage 4 Major was important for being the long-awaited return to LAN play for the league’s 2021 season. It has nearly been a year and a half since the last time these players and teams competed in local play on a stage, and that was a huge factor in what happened with these results. 

Seattle Surge came out in full force with the return to playing on the stage, dominating this match for the most part. The Surge pretty much destroyed London in all of the respawn modes with almost no contest but found themselves losing in the Search & Destroy game mode that needed some work for them. 

That said, Seattle beat London 3-1 for a pretty strong return to LAN and eliminating the Royal Ravens in the very first match. This signaled the possible return of the great players on the Surge team.

Next up was the other bottom bracket match for the first day. It featured the battle of Los Angeles with the LA Guerrillas taking on the LA Thieves. Huke was suddenly switched from the Thieves’ starting lineup with Drazah, who was outstanding in this match. 

This match was a pretty great one overall, with the Thieves dominated Hardpoint, but the Guerrillas outplayed them each time it came to Search & Destroy and Control to win this close match 3-2. The Thieves were eliminated from the tournament in a surprising upset. 

From there, we switched over to the upper bracket for two surprising sweeps in a row. Here, we saw the Dallas Empire take on the OpTic Chicago in a match that was crucial for the future of both of them. They both were the main top teams that have struggled this season, but Chicago had been on the upswing.

Meanwhile, it looked somewhat mixed for Dallas for this team until this point besides Vivid, who was a great asset. Oddly enough, though, Dallas Empire reminded us how insane they are in LAN play by destroying Chicago in every single game mode to get an easy 3-0 victory. 

From there, we came to the exciting match of the Minnesota Rokkr and the New York Subliners. The Subliners tragically did not have Asim on their lineup for this tournament, with Decemate filling in and doing a great job in the process. 

That said, this match was a rough one as expected for the Subliners with a decently close Hardpoint but dominant Search & Destroy and Control to give Rokkr a fairly easy 3-0 sweep to end the day. 

Day two continued with the next set of matches for the day. The first one was the next bottom bracket match, with the Seattle Surge moving on to face off against the Paris Legion. The Surge continued their winning streak with a powerful match that resulted in a 3-0 victory to eliminate the Legion. 

After that, we came to the Guerrillas versus the Florida Mutineers. While the Guerrillas reminded us that they could defeat their eternal Los Angeles rivals in the previous round, that same performance did not come through here, with the awesome Mutineers winning this one easily 3-0 for the fourth straight sweep of the tournament. 

After that, we moved back to the winners bracket, where the Dallas Empire took on the Toronto Ultra. This was a chance for Dallas to dominate a team that had proven to be their weakness, and it was one of the most exciting close matches, but Toronto won, in the end, 3-2. 

The day concluded with the other winners bracket match of the Minnesota Rokkr taking on the Atlanta FaZe. Going into this, we all pretty much knew that Atlanta would win this one. It was rather uncontested with the FaZe dominating their first LAN match 3-0. 

Day three came in with many matches as the teams needed to be dwindled from the several that we had to only four for the final day of the Stage 4 Major. The day kicked off with an exciting match between the Florida Mutineers and the New York Subliners. 

The Mutineers kicked it off with a rather close Hardpoint win, while the Subliners came in the next round with a solid S&D win. That was followed up by a dominant Control win from the Subliners and then an extremely close Hardpoint win from the Mutineers. 

This led to the coveted fifth-round tiebreaker with Search & Destroy, where it was moderately close, but the Subliners came through in the end, despite the temporary loss of Asim. This eliminated the Mutineers from the event.

After that, it was time for the next bottom bracket match of the Seattle Surge taking on the OpTic Chicago. Seattle tried its best to recreate the amazing upset from earlier in the stage of defeating Chicago, but it just barely did not go their way. 

This rather close match saw Chicago kick it off well with two straight wins of Hardpoint and S&D. But then Seattle came through with a shocking Control win followed by a close Hardpoint clutch. But, in the end, Chicago came through again with another S&D win to close out this match and end Seattle’s Cinderella run. 

Next up was the Dallas Empire taking on their rivals of the New York Subliners. When they met in the group play portion of Stage 4, New York showed how far they’ve come with Clay and the gang taking down his former teammates in terrific fashion. 

But the Subliners sorely lacked Asim and Dallas discovered newfound strength in return to LAN, making for a tough match for New York. Dallas won this one fairly easily in a 3-1 match to eliminate the Subliners. They, honestly, did slightly better than I expected without Asim, so they should consider that a small victory in a way. 

Yet another match came after that, with the OpTic Chicago taking on the Minnesota Rokkr. Rokkr had proven to take down Chicago in the past, but OpTic showed here that they would not have another upset in the Major by following up on the Seattle win with another dominant win 3-1 here to eliminate Rokkr. 

And the final match of the day was the winners finals with group winners Toronto Ultra and Atlanta FaZe taking each other. This was a true LAN test for potentially the two best teams in the league at this point. Atlanta did not falter in this 3-1 victory to secure a place in the grand finals for the fourth time in a row. 

The final day concluded with four teams left in the game. They were Atlanta FaZe, Toronto Ultra, and the welcome return to stardom for OpTic Chicago and Dallas Empire. It kicked off in the bottom bracket with Dallas Empire taking on OpTic Chicago in a rematch. 

Chicago put up more of a fight in this match after its own set of wins, but Dallas proved the better team at LAN in the end with a 3-1 victory here. The elimination finals followed this up with Dallas taking on Toronto Ultra in a rematch. 

The Empire had a terrific run in the Stage 4 Major, showing some much-needed signs of life for the current champs, and learned from the past loss against Toronto to make this yet another 3-2 match, but with Dallas the winners this time. 

This resulted in the grand finals of the Dallas Empire taking on Atlanta FaZe, a remake of the first Major we had in the 2021 season and the first time Dallas had been there since that match. Furthermore, Dallas performed much better in this grand finals than in their first one, with the closest grand finals ever since the start of the Call of Duty League. 

We went to the elusive ninth and final round for the first time, with both teams giving it their all. Though Dallas had won two of the four S&D rounds in the match, the final round was Atlanta’s map with Search & Destroy on Raid. It was rather close, but FaZe reminded us why you should probably not allow this map to go through as they won 6-4 to nail the third Atlanta FaZe Major win. 

With the third Atlanta FaZe Major win to date in the 2021 Call of Duty League season, the FaZe proved that they are still the best team in the business. It was interesting to see how the switch to LAN would affect Atlanta and the other teams in the league. 

Playing via LAN versus online is different, with the respawns and shooting feeling different as it is buttery smooth in local play. You do not have any lag or ping issues whatsoever this way, so everyone is virtually on the same page. It is completely about skill.

But this can be an adjustment for teams who do well at accounting for lag and then have to deal with the speed of not doing that anymore. That said, Atlanta did falter and showed signs of weakness in the grand finals that other teams could exploit in future LAN matches. 

Regardless, this still resulted in the third Atlanta FaZe Major win and the possibility of seeing FaZe as the number one team at the end of the season. We are all but guaranteed at this point to see Atlanta be the number one team in the league when the season is over, but that does not mean they will be the champs. 

They will have a really strong advantage and the possibility of becoming the number one team, but Dallas Empire showed last year that that advantage could only go so far. It will be interesting to see how the future goes as we head into the next stage. 

What is next for the 2021 season is the start of Stage 5. That will happen next week and feature the final stage of the 2021 season. This is the last moment before the playoffs, so all of the matches will be the most crucial ones that we have seen to date. 

Every point will matter. Every win will need to count if teams wish to be in the playoffs for the final season and, hopefully, not in the bottom bracket. As such, the current standings are more important than ever before as we head into Stage 5. You can find them below:

• Atlanta FaZe: 465 points
• Dallas Empire: 320 points
• Toronto Ultra: 315
• New York Subliners: 310
• OpTic Chicago: 270
• Minnesota Rokkr: 200
• Los Angeles Thieves: 180
• Florida Mutineers: 170
• Los Angeles Guerrillas: 100
• Paris Legion: 90
• London Royal Ravens: 80
• Seattle Surge: 80

As you can see, there are already some major changes from this tournament, with the Dallas Empire jumping through the ranks to reclaim the number two spot. Meanwhile, Toronto has surpassed New York to bump them down to the fourth spot. 

Then there is Minnesota, which has made it into the top half of the leaderboard by knocking LA down, with Florida now has the chance to do that soon. Unfortunately, the saddest part of this is that Seattle’s run in the Major was not enough to get them out of the dead last place. 

It remains to be seen how these changes will continue to play out in the final stage, with the bottom four teams still being close to one another and having the slight chance of making it to the playoffs if one of them has a near-perfect run during the next stage.