SMG Player of the Year 2025 Preseason Favorites

The Breaking Point Awards are back for the Black Ops 6 Season!

This season, we will be handing out over 17 awards for exceptional individual and team performance, including 8 that will be voted on by a panel. Awards will vary from excellence in a certain game mode to outstanding play with the SMG. Before the season begins, our team has voted for the preseason favorites for each of the panel-voted awards. The next award we'll break down is the Black Ops 6 SMG Player of the Year.

To start, we'll look at what the SMG Player of the Year award is & who the previous winner was.

The SMG Player of the Year Award

An SMG Player of the Year Award (Most Valuable Player) highlights the individual excellence of players in the SMG position while acknowledging how it impacts the team's success. It is given to the individuals deemed the most impactful over the entire season who were mainly in SMG roles. The panel is tasked to look at multiple factors including influence on the team's success, consistency, individual peaks, impact compared to other SMG players, and intangible qualities.

Last season, during Modern Warfare 3, the award was only taken into account the Regular Season. This year, the award will include Champs & the Esports World Cup. This makes the award a truly season-long award that will factor in every professional event during Black Ops 6.

Previous Award Winner

During Modern Warfare 3, the panel was made up of BP team members, CDL coaches, Co-streamers & ex-professional players (Scump, ZooMaa, Octane, Methodz, etc), and other media outlets. The final results finished with Chris "Simp" Lehr overwhelmingly winning the award. He received 30 of the 36 total 1st-place votes and ended with 342 voting points. The next closest player was Paco "HyDra" Rusiewiez, who had 268 points and received 29 of the 36 2nd-place votes. Here is how the full voting broke down:

2025 Preseason Favorites

Heading into the new title, the slate has been wiped clean. The BP team was asked for their preseason favorites going into Black Ops 6. The points were tallied, and these were the four players at the top. Here are your Black Ops 6 preseason SMG Player of the Year favorites:

○ Chris "Simp" Lehr
○ Anthony "Shotzzy" Cuevas-Castro
○ Paco "HyDra" Rusiewiez
○ Tyler "aBeZy" Pharris

Who Wins in the End?

We asked the team at BreakingPoint who they believe will win the SMG Player of the Year Award at the end of the season. Here is who they picked!

TacticalRab: HyDra
"HyDra is the most talented player in Call of Duty and will be LA Thieves' best player this year. LAT will split events with OpTic and FaZe, but HyDra will keep his spot as the most impactful SMG in CoD, the new-gen Scump."

Ronnie: HyDra
"Hydra—just like Scrap for MVP—giving Hydra an even better team than he's had in previous seasons is going to make him even more of a problem for every other team in the CDL."

Easy Mac: aBeZy
“I'm going to hedge my bets here with this pick. If I have Scrap winning the AR Player of the Year & Shotzzy winning MVP, I'll go with a FaZe SMG here. Simp has been ranked highly every season, so voter fatigue could kick in. aBeZy was amazing in MW2 & had a sneaky good season last year. With omnimovement, I fully expect him to be a monster in this title. Watch out for the SND demon to be back at full power this season."