BURBANK, Calif. -- The San Francisco Shock are a better team than the Dallas Fuel.

The Shock know that.

The Fuel know that.

The whole Overwatch world knows that, especially after the Shock's dominant 4-0 win over the Fuel on Sunday at Blizzard Arena. Didn't watch the game? Go watch a replay. It wasn't close.

“We were just outclassed, honestly,” said Ash “Trill” Powell, who was facing the Shock for the first time in his career. “They’re just a much better team than we are. You can’t really do a whole lot when they’re literally just better than you.”

This is true. There’s only so many tactics or strategies to employ, so many attempted bamboozles or so many substitutions for a team like the Fuel to make when playing a team like the Shock.

The Fuel’s loss all but closes the book on the 2019 Dallas season. There are still a couple of footnotes to be written, but Dallas (10-15) must win its final three matches, and get some help from Chengdu (12-14) and Atlanta (12-12) to qualify for the playoffs. Thanks to an unfavorable map differential (-19), even that might not be enough.

So as the final pages of this campaign are written -- one where the highlight came in April, during the Fuel’s homestand and before the current nine-match losing streak -- Dallas must turn to 2020.

But in reality, Dallas has already done so. It would have been concerning it if hadn’t, given the team’s 1-10 record in the second half of the season.

“Realistically we’ve been looking at 2020 for a while now,” head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said after the loss. “It doesn’t mean that we give any less towards our (2019) matches, but we want to plan for 2020 as early as possible so we can see how things develop during the season, how players grow -- that kind of thing.

“So we’ve been looking at 2020, and ways that we can stay on top of our game.”

What Sunday’s match showed was a big gap between one of the best teams in the league (the Shock are 20-5 and will be the No. 3 seed in the playoffs) and one that is still trying to play as a whole.

The Fuel have class players and are backed by a first-class organization in Envy Gaming, but something's been missing all year. It may have been masked during a favorable schedule in the first half of the season, when Dallas primarily played teams now in the bottom half of the table.

Atkins and Envy veteran Jonathan “HarryHook” Tejedor Rua had similar ideas about what the Fuel are missing, about what’s keeping Dallas from being in the conversation with the likes of the Shock or Vancouver Titans.

"I think the most important thing we have to fix right now is the mindset and be on the same page," Tejedor Rua said, "because we have players who have different ideas all the time, and it's hard to have just one because in Overwatch you don't need many ideas -- you just need one."

The Fuel have three matches left in the regular season. So can they flip that switch and fix their problem?

"Honestly, no," said Tejeda Rua, a professional Overwatch player since the game's launch. "I think it's something that takes a lot of time."

Time is something Dallas has, now that the playoffs are just about out of reach.

Atkins said roster composition has held back the Fuel somewhat this season (the retirement of Hwang “Effect” Hyeon, a midseason acquisition of Lucas “NotE” Meissner and more frequent substitutions this stage). Dallas still needs to find a way to get every player on the same page. The Shock bullied the Fuel, inserting different players on each map and showing how strong their team is.

There was no weak link from San Francisco on Sunday.

Atkins believes he has the roster that could be at the same level as the Shocks of the world, but it all comes down to being on the same page.

“We have lots of opinions and very smart players and lots of things will work, but we’re not always on the same page with how we should go about it,” Atkins said. “So I think nailing that issue will be a very big thing for the rest of our season now and also going into 2020.”

In 2020, the Overwatch League will change.

With the exception of two teams, every franchise will relocate to their home market. The Fuel will train in Dallas. They will host home matches, but also travel across the country and the globe. An already demanding schedule will have new challenges.

So the fact that the Fuel already are looking ahead to 2020 is encouraging. Dallas believes it has the talent to be one of the best teams.

In fact, some of that can still be shown in 2019. Dallas faces Hangzhou on Thursday and Guangzhou on Sunday. Then the Fuel face Atlanta in The Novo to close out the regular season Aug. 24.

“Our chances are pretty slim, but who knows?” Powell said. “Maybe if we just roll the rest of these, which we can if everyone still wants to put in the work and everyone’s still motivated to try, which I think everyone is, we should treat these games like any other games and take them seriously.

“If we can roll them, maybe we have a chance.”

On Twitter: @TommyMagelssen

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