#2 Dashy: Top 20 Players of Black Ops 7

The #2 player of the Black Ops 7 season is OpTic Texas' World Championship AR & objective king, Brandon "Dashy" Otell.

If there's one number that defines Dashy's Black Ops 7, it's hill time. Stage after stage, tournament after tournament, he led the league in seconds spent on the objective, the unglamorous stat that rarely trends but almost always decides who's actually winning hills. That relentless objective play, paired with a Major IV MVP award, made him the connective tissue of a roster stacked with individual talent.

Season Review

OpTic ran it back with the same core that swept both Champs and the Esports World Cup in Black Ops 6, becoming the first team in league history to win consecutive Champs titles. Dashy arrived on the back of a Most Clutch Player award and a #6 overall ranking the year before, with real expectations that he'd climb even higher in Black Ops 7. Cuyler "Huke" Garland, Anthony "Shotzzy" Cuevas-Castro, Brandon "Dashy" Otell, and Mason "Mercules" Ramsey returned unchanged, entering the season as the presumptive favorites, with most of the league viewing OpTic as its biggest threat.

The preseason went as expected, OpTic taking the Monster Energy Launch Invitational behind wins over FaZe Vegas (3-0) and a pair of victories against Paris Gentle Mates in the Winners Final (3-0) and Grand Final (4-3), before settling for 2nd at Kaysan's Showdown VIII. Every LAN they entered from that point on, they'd be the team to beat. The Major I Qualifiers complicated that narrative fast, OpTic closing at 4-3 with a 14-13 map count for the 6th seed, far from the dominant form fans expected. They found it again quickly on LAN, opening the Major with three straight 3-0 wins over Riyadh Falcons, G2 Minnesota, and Paris in the Winners Final, before the Gentle Mates flipped the script in the rematch, beating OpTic 4-3 on Texas home turf for a runner-up finish. Dashy was a star in SND throughout the event, a 1.27 K/D, 0.78 kills per round, 107.9 ADR, and 14 snipes.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

The Major II Qualifiers picked up right where the dominant stretches left off, OpTic claiming the 1st seed at 10-1 with a 31-10 map count and their only loss coming to Riyadh Falcons. This was the stage where Dashy's Overload game really started to take shape, closing with a 1.12 K/D and a team-high 15 goals, while his SND held firm at a 1.11 K/D with 37 snipes. The Major told the same story as before: three dominant wins over Toronto KOI, G2 Minnesota, and Vegas, then a Grand Final rematch that FaZe won this time, sweeping 4-1 for OpTic's second straight silver medal. Dashy topped the team in overall K/D (1.12) and Overload K/D (1.30) at the event, posting a 1.28 K/D overall and leading the entire tournament with 104.2 hill time per 10 minutes, the first of many times that stat would top the leaderboard.

Stage III brought a perfect 5-0 qualifying run and the 1st seed at a 15-6 map count, undercut by a 2-3 Semifinal loss to LA Thieves in the Minor that kept OpTic still searching for a regular-season tournament win. All four starters clustered tightly between a 1.06 and 1.09 K/D through the online stretch, with Dashy landing at 1.09, an 88.8 Slayer Rating, and 88.1 seconds of hill time per 10 minutes. At Major III in Atlanta, Bruce and company cruised through Pool A over OMiT and Minnesota, then ran the bracket past Miami Heretics, Riyadh Falcons, and Toronto KOI to reach a third straight Grand Final, this time against LA Thieves. Former OpTic academy product Jeremiah "Nium" Harrison delivered the twist, leading Thieves to a seven-map win that made it 11-0 in best-of-5s on LAN but 0-3 in Grand Finals for OpTic. Dashy again paced the team with a 1.12 K/D, led the league with 99.0 hill time per 10 minutes, ranked 2nd in non-traded kill percentage at 71.9%, and tacked on 9 snipes and 3 clutches in SND for good measure.

📸 Photo by @OpTic

Three silver medals deep, OpTic entered Stage IV desperate for a breakthrough. They secured the 3rd seed in the Major IV Qualifiers at 3-2 with a 13-8 map count, and Dashy's consistency never wavered, leading the league with 91.4 hill time per 10 minutes and ranking 2nd in Overload K/D at 1.16, the glue holding the roster together heading into a Minor II Final loss to LA Thieves that again raised questions about the matchup. Those questions lingered into Major IV, held overseas with Paris Gentle Mates hosting, where OpTic fell to LA Thieves 0-3 in the Winners Final, their first trip through the Lower Bracket all year. They regrouped to eliminate the tournament hosts 3-0, then delivered a seven-map Grand Final for the ages, finally beating LA Thieves 4-3 for their first Major title of the season. Dashy led the team with a 1.13 K/D and walked away with tournament MVP honors, adding a 1.16 respawn K/D and 93.2 hill time per 10 minutes. It was no coincidence that when OpTic finally broke through, Dashy was the one leading the way.

📸 Photo by @DashySZN

Champs carried the weight of history, a chance to become the first team ever to three-peat. A 1st-seed regular season, itself a league first, set up a clean run past Miami and Paris before another eClassico date with FaZe in the Winners Final. This time, history wasn't on OpTic's side, falling 2-3 there and 2-5 in the Grand Final rematch, capping a season with a 1-4 record in Grand Finals. It wasn't Bruce's best event individually, a 0.96 K/D and 80.9 Slayer Rating with negative marks in both Hardpoint (0.91) and SND (0.94), though he still led the league in hill time per 10 minutes at 93.0, objective work that never seems to leave him no matter how the slaying goes. He'd need another level once the tour shifted to Paris.

He found it. OpTic Gaming stumbled early in EWC Pool Play, dropping a 2-3 decision to 100 Thieves, but recovered to sweep Team WaR and Project Notorious into the playoffs, then blitzed FaZe Esports 4-0 and outlasted 100 Thieves in a seven-map rematch to reach the Grand Final, where Team Heretics fell 5-3 for the Esports World Cup title and its $600,000 prize. Dashy was back to his usual self in Paris, a 1.12 K/D and a 93.9 Slayer Rating, adding a 1.24 K/D in Overload with 8 goals and 3,683 damage per 10 minutes, plus a 1.08 K/D in Hardpoint with 84.0 hill time per 10 minutes and 3,493 damage per 10 minutes. A fitting cap to the year from the league's most consistent objective player.

How Good Was Dashy in 2026?

Hardpoint

Dashy developed into exactly the kind of do-it-all AR OpTic needed, closing the year with a 1.02 K/D while leading the league with 89.2 hill time per 10 minutes. His slaying (24.1 kills per 10 minutes) and damage (3,304 per 10 minutes) both sat above league average, an impressive combination alongside that objective workload. That level held on LAN, where he posted a 1.03 K/D and a CDL-best 91.6 hill time per 10 minutes. He held two of the Top 5 single-map hill time totals of the season, putting up 153 seconds against FaZe Vegas (4th, Major II) and 152 seconds against Miami (5th, Major III), and led the league with 44 maps of 100-plus seconds of hill time, doing so in 43% of his maps played.

Search & Destroy

SND wasn't his strongest mode this year, but Dashy still turned in solid individual numbers, closing with a 1.02 K/D, 0.67 kills per round, 101.8 ADR, and a 53.8% opening duel win rate. Bruce added 86 snipes, the 5th-most in the league, along with 10 clutches. He was also the first player to post a flawless SND map this season, going 8-0 against Paris in the Winners Final of Major I, a mark Scrap would later tie. His LAN form ticked up further, a 1.08 K/D and a 55.7% opening duel win rate, evidence that he raised his level for the biggest tournaments.

📸 Photo by @CODLeague

Overload

Dashy was one of the best Overload players in the league this season, picking up the new mode quickly and helping turn OpTic into one of its top teams. He closed the year with a 1.13 K/D, 75 goals, 24.1 kills per 10 minutes, and 3,203 damage per 10 minutes, improving on LAN to a 1.15 K/D and 24.7 kills per 10 minutes. Bruce ranked 2nd in the league's Cellium Index for Overload, finishing with a positive K/D in 74.3% of his maps, and led OpTic with 5 maps of 4,000-plus damage, adding 6 hat tricks along the way. A truly all-around season from one of the league's most complete players.

A Look Ahead to Modern Warfare IV

Despite rumors that HyDra had interest in joining OpTic this offseason, the organization has confirmed there will be no changes to the roster heading into Modern Warfare IV. As always, new challengers will emerge, and superteams will form around the league, but as it stands, every one of them will still have to get through OpTic to win it all. Dashy has blossomed over the last couple of seasons into a perennial MVP candidate, and heading into next year, he and OpTic will be looking to add even more hardware to an already stacked trophy case.