Aaron Atkins didn’t want to give anything away from last Wednesday’s scrimmage.

But he still shared an important moment.

The Dallas Fuel’s second-year head coach, known to the esports world as “Aero,” gave an example of how everything is different for his team in 2020.

From how it operates, practices and discusses the finer details, all of it has elevated from a disappointing 2019 season.

“We were just in a match where a team played something really weird and different from all the other teams,” Aero told The Dallas Morning News. “So we took some time and talked about it. We didn’t wait until the end of the day, we talked about it right away.”

This was good practice considering the league implemented the new Hero Pools system last week, pushing teams to lean toward adaptability rather than excellence within a single gameplan. While such changes could disrupt the dynamic for coaches and teams at the top, it could also assist a crew like the Fuel, who are attempting to escape the past.

Their two seasons in the Overwatch League were underwhelming, starting with the inaugural season in 2018. The Fuel were hyped to be one of the top teams with a loaded roster in a city that embraced esports.

The winning didn’t go as predicted: 12-28 in Year 1, and 10-18 in Year 2 to go with zero postseason appearances.

There were major roadblocks during the two-year span. A high-profile player was removed from the roster, a group expected to shine blended with the bottom-feeders and multiple losing streaks strafed across the schedule, including a 12-match skid to end the 2019 season.

A lot changed in the months separating then and now. It needed to.

2020 is a critical year for the Overwatch League because it elevates its travel schedule with geolocation and team-based homestands -- the eyes of the esports world will be on OWL to see if this ambitious league can fully take off. It’s also an important year for Dallas, which embarks on a crucial third season for the franchise on Saturday to prove it can be more than an esports hub for the optimistic Envy Gaming.

The Fuel wanted to win, so they made big adjustments in their coaching staff and roster. But they also did the little things.

“Last year we put a lot of emphasis on spur-of-the-moment communication between coaches and players, but also our review time would be loaded on the backend of the day,” Aero said.

“This year, we’re trying to really capture immediately after something happens. Let’s pause. Let’s talk about it. Let’s break it down real quick.”

The Moves

The Fuel’s most recent offseason could be defined by star players and coaches acquired and a reconfigured team structure. Important pieces were retained, too.

Aero, who led the Team USA Overwatch team to a World Cup victory in November 2019, headlines that category.

“We trust in Aaron and we know he’s capable,” Fuel general manager Mat Taylor told The News. “Clearly for Team USA he put together a fantastic roster. He had a good, good staff around him and that’s something that we want to replicate here with the Fuel. I don’t see why it can’t be that. I think we’ve made a lot of good roster moves. I think people do see that we definitely made moves that made a lot of sense for our team and what we’re trying to create.”

Taylor said there was a feeling of a “reset button” with this current team, but they wanted to put together a talented group with motive. That meant picking up a couple pieces, and shedding others, including Envy mainstays Ponghop “Mickie” Rattanasangchod and Timo “Taimou” Kettunen

The Fuel reconstructed its damage line with the already established Kim “DoHa” Dong-ha (signed from Contenders) and Jang “Decay” Gui-un (acquired via trade with the Los Angeles Gladiators, who received main tank Son “OGE” Min-seok).

Dallas moved Mickie to a content-creation role, and Taimou signed a Contenders contract. All moves stemmed from the staff recognizing change was needed.

A goal, Taylor said, was to cover the entire hero pool. Overwatch was in a repetitive state before prior to Hero Pools, so there are several heroes that still haven’t seen much daylight in the competitive scene.

So teams may experiment. The Fuel made mistakes in scrimmages, but still won fights when players like Decay took over. Aero said the Fuel expect a process, and he doesn’t particularly care for where anyone thinks the Fuel stack up against other teams.

“Expectations? Throw them out the window,” Aero said. “I don't want to think about being the best team in the league. I want to think about how we accomplished our goals today.”

Aero stressed the importance of being flexible and adaptable. The Fuel worked toward that months before the league announced hero pools, too. The structure of the coaching staff used to be role based, he said. Individuals were responsible for coaching the tank, support and damage players. When roles needed to combine, that process got messy.

The coaching staff, which added Kim “Yong” Yong-jin, is more detail oriented now. They collaborate instead of separating the work, allowing for a more precise style of play. That could be crucial considering adaptability may prove to me one of the most important traits of a contending team.

Jon Spector, the Vice President of Overwatch esports at Blizzard Entertainment, told The News the feedback of the pools, which will remove four different heroes every week during league competition, sparked mostly positive feedback.

A lot of the concerns he received came from coaches.

“Previously if you’re the head coach of a team a lot of your job is to identify as quickly as you can what the best strategy or meta composition is going to be,” Spector said. “As soon as you figure out what that is your job is to spend the next weeks and months drilling your team on the intricacies of that composition. I think the head coach role now becomes more about how we teach our team to be adaptable and flexible on the fly when they go up against competition that they haven’t played much against.”

Reversing history

Dallas Fuel's "NotE" Lucas Meissner (center) practices with other players on Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at Envy Gaming headquarters in Dallas. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

Team chemistry also became all the more important with the update. The good news for Aero is that the Fuel took that into account already when restructuring its roster. The addition of tank star Noh “Gamsu” Youngjin.

When he joined the Fuel, he reunited with a teammate from his Boston Uprising days, Lucas “NotE” Meissner. Those two were driving factors in Boston’s 27-17 season in 2018 before they parted ways with the organization in 2019, with NotE joining Dallas via trade and Gamsu playing for Shanghai.

Gamsu, who signed with the Fuel in November 2019, said playing with NotE again was helpful making a comfortable transition, but Dallas already caught his eye.

“After my contract ended, I was looking for a team that worked perfectly for me,” Gamsu said. ”I thought the Fuel worked well because I wanted to play for a western team and I thought the support was great. I felt it was the best decision at the time and my mind hasn’t changed.”

NotE, who was part of the Dallas group that slogged through a winless Stage Four in 2019, said the morale of the team improved through the offseason, and Aero getting the World Cup victory was important for their leader.

“I think if you are constantly attacked by people from the outside telling you that you’re doing an awful job that takes a toll on you,” NotE said. “You have to have extremely resilient mental skills to survive in that role. I think winning the World Cup gave his confidence back but now we can go into our scrims and our practice and confidently coach us and what he’s telling us is right, because coming off two seasons off poor results it’s tough.”

The results are showing early, according to Fuel personnel.

Aero said the team had a winning record in scrims, but both he and NotE agreed that wasn’t really the important part. NotE said teams put too much stock into preseason results, and the Fuel didn’t have an accurate history with standings.

“Most of the power rankings just reveal us as bottom five,”NotE said. “They do that because that's what history tells us. History tells us that the Fuel are going to, at some point in time, crash and burn. But I don't think that's going to happen this season. There will be a lot of bad teams, but we definitely aren’t going to be one of them.”

History has its chance to see the Fuel when they open the 2020 season at 6 p.m. Saturday at Esports Stadium Arlington against the Los Angeles Valiant.

Can a new group change the trajectory of a hopeful organization? Or, will history repeat itself?

Aero and his new-look Fuel can decide that.