Enable explains why Empire have “regressed” in CDL 2021 & might need a roster change
Instagram, @ianenable / Call of Duty LeagueThe Dallas Empire haven’t met the expectations raised by their Call of Duty League Championship in 2020, leading Reverse Sweep’s Enable to suggest that a roster change may be needed.
When you win CDL Champs and go into the next season with nearly the exact same roster, expectations are understandably high. Unfortunately, while the Empire are still the second-ranked team in the entire league, they have yet to prove themselves a real threat to win a $500,000 Stage Major.
Two stages in, with the third Major on the way, Dallas present more question marks than fear. More concerned than most, Reverse Sweep’s Ian ‘Enable’ Wyatt debated the team’s future with co-hosts Katie Bedford and Jonathan ‘Pacman’ Tucker.
Boldly professing that he’s not sure if the Empire “can win a Major with this roster,” Enable elaborated on his point to an unconvinced Bedford and Pacman: If other teams are improving while Dallas regress, something’s gotta give.
Pacman wasn’t willing to accept Enable’s first hot take at all: “Oh… no, no, no. That’s cap.”
Noting that it took Dallas months to find their form in 2020, he specified that Anthony ‘Shotzzy’ Cuevas could be the difference-maker moving forward: “There is this Shotzzy level that he gets to, where he’s ridiculous. And once he gets to that level, it transforms the roster completely. They can win with this roster.”
While Enable accepts that argument and agrees he “might have stretched it,” that hope for improvement is directly at odds with what he has seen this season: “They’ve regressed in my opinion. They haven’t improved in game mode.”
CDLElaborating on that perceived regression, Enable explains that Black Ops Cold War isn’t Modern Warfare’s “5v5, where you can thrive off chaos.” Instead, “this is a very structured Call of Duty. And I think that could be a reason why some of the players aren’t performing well.”
While Pacman and Bedford agree that the Empire haven’t impressed as much as expected, the former asserts that Dallas is too stacked with star power “to improve on the roster that they have.”
Nonetheless, Enable remains uncertain. The former pro is willing to walk his original hot take back a little bit, but still believes the roster is on thinner ice than most are willing to acknowledge: “Maybe I overstepped a little bit with that comment, but I think we need to see something. Because they’re just kind of getting by and other teams are improving at a fast rate.”