In the first years of Rocket League esports, when North America was still figuring out how to structure leagues, rankings, and world championships, few players showed up on as many important rosters as Caleb “Moses” Nichols. From the early days of Kings of Urban to Genesis, Exodus, Orbit, Renegades, and finally a veteran run through the Rocket League Rival Series, he kept appearing wherever serious teams tried to break into the top tier.
Public prize ledgers list Nichols with just under fourteen thousand dollars in earnings from thirty six Rocket League tournaments, the bulk of it from Rocket League Championship Series seasons and the later Rival Series. That number looks modest beside later six figure champions, but in context it represents a player who made almost every key early North American event and helped shape what competitive Rocket League looked like on broadcast.
This Esports Legacy Profile focuses on Moses’ years in Rocket League, from his earliest online cups to his final RLRS campaign, tracing how a self described role player became one of the safest bets in North America when a team needed stability.
Early Life, Screen Name, and First Steps Into Competition
Caleb Nichols was born on February 10, 1996, in the United States. By the time Rocket League emerged in 2015 he was already comfortable in competitive online spaces, playing under the tag “cazaz911” before eventually moving to the name that would appear on RLCS broadcasts, Moses.
ESPN’s early feature on his career describes him grinding through ESL’s Go4RocketLeague cups and Major League Gaming weeklies with a small team called Backyard Brazilians. Those lineups fluctuated as he cycled through early partners like Waze One and Edwind, but the pattern was already visible. His teams rarely entered tournaments as favorites, yet they kept forcing their way into later rounds and occasionally crossing paths with the giants of the time, especially Kings of Urban.
Those weeklies and semi professional leagues did more than fill out a résumé. They put Nichols in front of the people who shaped early North American power rankings, on streams that top players, casters, and analysts actually watched. By the time Kings of Urban unexpectedly opened a starting spot, Moses was one of the few up and comers who had already proven he could hang with them on the same field.
Kings of Urban and the First North American Peak
Kings of Urban entered Rocket League’s pre RLCS era as one of North America’s most feared lineups, featuring Fireburner and Jacob alongside rotating third players. When star forward Gambit left the team after a high profile win at MLG, many assumed the replacement would be another already established star. Instead the roster move shocked observers. The organization chose Moses, the hardworking grinder from weekly cups, to step into a championship caliber trio.
From late 2015 into early 2016, Kings of Urban with Moses became the measuring stick for every other North American team. In the Rocket League Central Pro League, Kings of Urban topped the North American group stage with a twenty two and eight game record and a plus forty one goal differential, earning the first seed into playoffs. They went on to win that season, adding a small but meaningful offline title to the growing rivalry with iBUYPOWER Cosmic.
The peak of this stretch came on informal but influential community power rankings. In February 2016, after months of results, Kings of Urban finally overtook iBUYPOWER for the top spot in North America, and held that position for more than a month and a half. For Moses, who had spent the previous year trying to break into that conversation at all, the idea of being part of the consensus best team in his region was both validation and fuel.
Yet this first peak did not last. On April 8, 2016, Kings of Urban removed Moses from the starting lineup, replacing him with Canadian forward SadJunior and reshaping the core that would later be signed by NRG Esports. In another era, getting cut from the best team in the region might have ended his story. Instead it became the pivot that turned him into the archetypal Rocket League journeyman.
Genesis, RLCS Season 1, and a New Climb
Moses did not stay teamless for long. Within days he joined Genesis, a roster built around Braden “Pluto” Schenetzki and Quinn Lobdell. Liquipedia and contemporary coverage list Genesis as a solid but not dominant North American side when he joined, a team expected to fight for RLCS qualification rather than shape the region.
With Moses in the lineup, that ceiling shifted. Genesis qualified for the inaugural Rocket League Championship Series Season 1 league stage and, more importantly, converted that entry into a place at the first ever RLCS World Championship in Los Angeles. Bracket records and prize ledgers show Exodus and Genesis both reaching the live finals, with Moses’ team finishing fifth to sixth and earning just under one thousand dollars per player from the world championship prize pool.
During the Season 1 online finals, official stat packages compiled by Psyonix and cited in later ESPN coverage ranked Moses among the league’s best in what might be called glue categories. He finished near the top of the table for saves and assists per game, numbers that reflected a player more interested in keeping his team stable than chasing the flashy goal totals that dominate highlight reels.
Those strengths could also create friction. In interviews, Moses later explained that he left Genesis because of play style differences, praising Quinn and Pluto but admitting that he struggled to fit cleanly within their preferred rhythms. In a young esport still learning how to talk about roles, that sort of stylistic conflict was common. For Moses, it opened the door to his most famous trio.
Exodus: From Qualifiers To The First World Championship
When Nichols left Genesis he joined Garrett “GarrettG” Gordon and Isaac “Turtle” App in a new lineup called Exodus. To outside observers, the move looked risky. He was leaving a team that had already earned a world championship slot to form another contender from scratch. To the people involved, it made perfect sense. The mechanical firepower of GarrettG and Turtle combined with Moses’ positioning and experience created a more balanced roster, one that could both score in bunches and survive prolonged defensive pressure.
Tournament records from the RLCS Season 1 cycle show how quickly Exodus justified that gamble. In the second North American online final they pushed all the way to a best of seven series against Kings of Urban, falling only in a tight seven game final but securing the top seed into the world championship. At the live LAN in Los Angeles, Exodus took a top six finish and added another several hundred dollars per player to Moses’ prize total, reinforcing his status as one of the few players to reach the world championship with two different organizations in the same season.
Beyond RLCS, Exodus with Moses picked up a string of important online results. The GamerSaloon Champions League, a long running online North American tournament, tracks Exodus winning the event for seven hundred fifty dollars, beating a field that included Selfless Gaming and other major teams. In community power rankings they regularly appeared in the North American top three, sometimes overtaking Kings of Urban and iBUYPOWER for the first place slot.
From a stylistic standpoint, Exodus tilted more aggressively than Genesis. Contemporary previews of the RLCS Season 1 online final framed them as a high pressure shooting team that relied on Moses to stabilize the back line and keep the midfield organized, a theme that would recur throughout his career.
Orbit and RLCS Season 2 In Amsterdam
As Rocket League moved into its second RLCS season, team Exodus became one of the first high profile squads to be fully signed by a larger esports organization. In October 2016 Orbit announced the acquisition of GarrettG, Turtle, and Moses, effectively rebranding Exodus into Orbit’s Rocket League division.
Under the Orbit banner, the trio produced the most statistically impressive sustained run of Moses’ career. Official RLCS Season 2 coverage lists Orbit as one of the most efficient teams in the world, allowing very few shots per game, posting the best save percentage in the league, and maintaining a shooting percentage that placed them near the top of all regions.
In that ecosystem Moses fully embraced the role of defensive and rotational anchor. ESPN’s breakdown of Orbit describes him as the player who did much of the “dirty work,” clearing the ball, contesting midfield challenges, and finishing high on the scoreboard despite registering fewer goals than his more aggressive teammates. It dovetailed with his earlier RLCS statistics and further cemented his identity as the kind of third man who made risk taking teammates look better.
Orbit’s results matched that profile. In the RLCS Season 2 North American Regional Championship, official RocketLeague.com recaps list Orbit finishing second behind NRG Esports, earning six thousand five hundred dollars and one of the four North American spots at the Amsterdam world championship. At the RLCS Season 2 Grand Finals they placed seventh to eighth, picking up an additional one thousand six hundred sixty six dollars per player and marking Moses’ second consecutive world championship appearance.
Taken together, Exodus and Orbit capture the heart of Nichols’ legacy. Wherever he went, teams that already looked dangerous suddenly seemed capable of pushing deeper into brackets and holding their own against the best defenses Europe had to offer.
Journeyman Veteran: Ohana, Renegades, And The RLRS
After Orbit’s Season 2 run, the original trio split as North American rosters shuffled in response to new organizations and changing expectations. Moses stayed in the competitive pool, continuing the journeyman pattern that had already defined his first year at the top.
Community wikis and tournament records list him on several lineups through 2017, including Ohana and a short stint as a substitute under the NRG banner, before he landed on Renegades for RLCS Season 4. Playing alongside familiar names from the North American circuit, he returned to the RLCS league stage and added another world level campaign to his record, finishing seventh to eighth in North America and earning more than two thousand four hundred dollars from that season alone.
Even as the RLCS evolved into longer seasons and higher stakes, Nichols remained near the heart of the semi professional scene. EsportsEarnings and Psyonix records show him reappearing in 2018 under the Compadres banner in the Rocket League Rival Series Season 6, where he and his teammates took fourth place in North America and collected two thousand dollars in prize money. That same year they placed second in the Renegade Cup North America Fall Frenzy finals, another small but significant marker of his continued presence in high level play.
By the end of this period Moses’ tournament history covered more than three years of sustained competition, from early RLC Pro League successes with Kings of Urban to the second tier league that fed into modern RLCS structures. Public databases now list him as a former player, but the footprint he left remains visible in the organizations and teammates who moved on to titles after sharing the field with him.
Playing Style and Lasting Legacy
What makes Caleb “Moses” Nichols significant within Rocket League history is not a single international trophy or record setting goal total. It is the consistency with which his teams rose above expectations.
On Kings of Urban he stepped into an already strong duo and helped them finally break iBUYPOWER Cosmic’s hold on North American rankings. On Genesis he turned an outside shot at RLCS qualification into a safe bet for the world championship. On Exodus and Orbit he anchored one of the earliest examples of a fully professionalized North American trio, one that blended explosive offense from GarrettG and Turtle with a midfield and back line structure that analysts still point to when they discuss how to play Rocket League “the right way.”
Statistically, that impact shows up in categories that often live at the edge of highlight packages. He registered strong numbers for saves, assists, and score per game without dominating goal charts. Conceptually, he helped define what coaches and casters started calling the third man, the player who takes slightly fewer risks, reads the game two steps ahead, and turns chaotic situations into controllable ones for his teammates.
From an Esports Legacy perspective, Moses belongs to the first true class of Rocket League professionals. His career maps directly onto the birth of RLCS, touches the earliest world championships in Los Angeles and Amsterdam, and extends into the Rival Series era that set up the franchise style leagues that followed.
He never lifted an RLCS world championship trophy, but that is not the only way to measure importance. For a historian of the esport, Moses stands as the archetype of the early support star. He was the player teams called when they wanted to turn potential into results, the one constant in a scene where rosters changed weekly and every season felt like a new experiment. Wherever he went, success had a habit of following, and that is a legacy worth preserving.