OpTic Texas suffer massive first-round upset at CDL Major Five

The Call of Duty League Major Five started with some expected results today, from Atlanta Faze sweeping the Vegas Legion to the Toronto Ultra squeaking past the New York Subliners in a five-map series. But the third match of the day featured the first true upset of the tournament, with the stage-long undefeated OpTic Texas getting swept by the Florida Mutineers, 3-0.

Despite the fact that the Mutineers are just playing to win the tournament, and cannot qualify for the CDL Championship, the lack of expectations proved to be OpTic Texas’  downfall. A team that hadn’t lost a qualifier match in two stages got sent to the lower bracket without even winning a map.

Just about everyone expected OpTic to win: 91 percent of the viewers who used channel points on Twitch to bet on the match outcome voted for OpTic Texas, leaving nine percent to get a bounty of points.

Related: OpTic welcomes back 3-time world champion for final events of 2023 CDL season

It was written in the stars, in retrospect, when looking at the stats of these two teams matching up against each other on a stage. Despite the roster changes forbetween both teams, Florida have beaten OpTic five out of seven times on LAN, according to BreakingPoint. 

When it came to this particular match, players were frying across the board on Florida. In particular, Kenyen “Capsidal” Sutton led the series with 73 kills.

Just after the win, Florida as a team were hyped for the win, but also focused on the journey ahead.

“I think we’re on cloud nine right now,” Mutineers player Tyler “FeLo” Johnson said to the media. “We just played them less than a week ago online, and we kept the same mindset going into this LAN. We haven’t even hit our peak yet, and we can keep going.”

For a team that has a lot of experience both winning and losing against OpTic, they knew what to do heading into this LAN.

“We talked yesterday to my team about how as individual players, we came out flat in our previous match against OpTic,” Mutineers player Javier “Vikul” Milagro said. “I told them that we live and die by our decisions. Let’s play as a team and focus on individual gunfights. As it turns out, we gave the crowd no chance to be hyped.”

Now, OpTic Texas will face the LA Thieves in the lower bracket in a finals rematch, with one team guaranteed to go home sad on May 26. As for Florida, they continue in the upper bracket, facing the winner of Boston and Minnesota on May 27.