After the reception AW got in the wider community; I bet Treyarch were deeply concerned - trouble is, they were already two years into developing BO3 by the time AW got released so it was too late to do a dramatic u-turn. I can't judge BO3 on what happened with AW but the general era isn't very appealing.
I think Treyarch were possibly threatened by Titanfall at time time of producing BO3 at the start and decided to mimic that type of game to squeeze the competition but that flopped and so did Sledgehammer's game. Hopefully Treyarch's reputation will outweigh any concerns but they could have actually screwed themselves before they even started.
The franchise is actually better-placed than it's ever been in regards to the cycle but they're just farming out futuristic titles now. Sledgehammer could handle future titles, IW could do the modern era and Treyarch could make the more classic games. That would be a good variety per year for me but this persistent future theme is getting extremely tedious.