What happened to the clam?
I commented on Marshall's blog about this over here, then realized that it deserved its own, more fully fleshed entry (or at least belongs here anyway, even if I don't add anything really new...).
I find that the clam today has strayed far from its humble beginnings. I freely accept that Earth Atomizer did not invent the clam, but from that team through to the combo Boston teams to Death or Glory, we definitely perfected and elevated it to the highest echelons of the game and made it a part of the defensive playbook of many teams. However, at this point, I question its usefulness, at least the way DoG now plays it.
When Earth Atomizer started playing the clam back in '90, it was a very aggressive, 0 to 1 pass (at most) defense. It originally started as a way of stopping the big gainer from the cutter at the back of the stack. A caveat here is that pull rules were different back then in that the pulling team was NOT penalized for pulling the disc out of bounds. If the pull landed in the endzone the player could walk the disc up, so they were not in a rush to put the disc into play. And if it landed out of bounds, they could take it in the middle of the field (but no brick). So when you wanted to set up the clam, you inevitably pulled the disc out of bounds and had the leisure to get down on your man (clam by man) or into your positions. The key was that there was VERY little differentiation between the clam and a fronting D with the last man back. When the disc was checked in, it was the responsibility of #4 (who is supposed to cover the break mark side of the stack) to watch for 3,4,5,6 to cut on the break side. The only thing that #4 might do was to move up from the 4th position to the 3rd position and play slightly (couple of feet) on the break mark side, and this would only occur after the disc was checked in. It was the rare team that would be immediately able to identify the clam based on some slight movement of one defensive player after the disc was checked in. Most importantly, 3 and 4 did NOT flare out of the stack unless 3-6 in the stack cut. And the preferred goal was to time your flare so that the throw was in the air and make the D, not to just stop the throw and hope this would result in a high count throw or god forbid a stall. 3 or 4 would pick up and then play man defense on whoever cut from the stack and then 5 would fill the spot of whichever of 3 or 4 flared out to take the next upfield cutter. After the first pass was completed, we were playing man-to-man.
Now the clam has devolved into more of a zone, giving the thrower the ability to try and find an open guy as 3 and 4 automatically stray out to their sides before the disc is even in play, making it obvious that there is a junk defense being played. Part of this is the change in the pull rule providing disincentives to teams to pull the disc out of bounds, and it is the rare pull that will stay up in the air long enough for the defense to get down on the pull and truly set up (and also rare that a team will truly be in a stack on a pull as opposed to trying to run their pull play in the melee right off the pull). However, this evolution was occurring well before the institution of the brick and/or play the pull as it lands in the endzone. And it reached its zenith (nadir?) during the infamous Boston 8 at Mother's Day in Philly in '93. That team won a difficult tournament including a semis victory over a reasonably full and stacked NY, NY squad (pre NY breakup). The philosophy was to play clam for the entire point, minimizing running, keeping the game close, and conserving energy for the end game push. This was the first time where the clam became truly a multi-pass defense. And unfortunately, it never came back from that.
Now, at the highest levels, the clam only serves as a change of pace defense for a point or two to get an offensive team out of its rhythm, and most teams have no problems beating it as it looks more like a zone (and is never hidden). There is actually very little to differentiate it from a zone, except for more man coverage up front. Also, 3 and 4 no longer stay with the cutter as they come in, but they try and hand off their man to 1 and 2, because they shouldn't be leaving their area (for the subsequent passes). This is where the clam usually breaks down.
Consequently, I will be proposing to my team a return to the roots of the 1 pass clam, and I have no problems posting it here because the point is, you won't recognize it on the field until it's too late. And it may very well have to occur on an out of bounds of pull, but the frequency of turns should make up for the loss of 25 yards, or it might become a default defense of clam by man when the disc is pulled out of bounds.
Thoughts?
I find that the clam today has strayed far from its humble beginnings. I freely accept that Earth Atomizer did not invent the clam, but from that team through to the combo Boston teams to Death or Glory, we definitely perfected and elevated it to the highest echelons of the game and made it a part of the defensive playbook of many teams. However, at this point, I question its usefulness, at least the way DoG now plays it.
When Earth Atomizer started playing the clam back in '90, it was a very aggressive, 0 to 1 pass (at most) defense. It originally started as a way of stopping the big gainer from the cutter at the back of the stack. A caveat here is that pull rules were different back then in that the pulling team was NOT penalized for pulling the disc out of bounds. If the pull landed in the endzone the player could walk the disc up, so they were not in a rush to put the disc into play. And if it landed out of bounds, they could take it in the middle of the field (but no brick). So when you wanted to set up the clam, you inevitably pulled the disc out of bounds and had the leisure to get down on your man (clam by man) or into your positions. The key was that there was VERY little differentiation between the clam and a fronting D with the last man back. When the disc was checked in, it was the responsibility of #4 (who is supposed to cover the break mark side of the stack) to watch for 3,4,5,6 to cut on the break side. The only thing that #4 might do was to move up from the 4th position to the 3rd position and play slightly (couple of feet) on the break mark side, and this would only occur after the disc was checked in. It was the rare team that would be immediately able to identify the clam based on some slight movement of one defensive player after the disc was checked in. Most importantly, 3 and 4 did NOT flare out of the stack unless 3-6 in the stack cut. And the preferred goal was to time your flare so that the throw was in the air and make the D, not to just stop the throw and hope this would result in a high count throw or god forbid a stall. 3 or 4 would pick up and then play man defense on whoever cut from the stack and then 5 would fill the spot of whichever of 3 or 4 flared out to take the next upfield cutter. After the first pass was completed, we were playing man-to-man.
Now the clam has devolved into more of a zone, giving the thrower the ability to try and find an open guy as 3 and 4 automatically stray out to their sides before the disc is even in play, making it obvious that there is a junk defense being played. Part of this is the change in the pull rule providing disincentives to teams to pull the disc out of bounds, and it is the rare pull that will stay up in the air long enough for the defense to get down on the pull and truly set up (and also rare that a team will truly be in a stack on a pull as opposed to trying to run their pull play in the melee right off the pull). However, this evolution was occurring well before the institution of the brick and/or play the pull as it lands in the endzone. And it reached its zenith (nadir?) during the infamous Boston 8 at Mother's Day in Philly in '93. That team won a difficult tournament including a semis victory over a reasonably full and stacked NY, NY squad (pre NY breakup). The philosophy was to play clam for the entire point, minimizing running, keeping the game close, and conserving energy for the end game push. This was the first time where the clam became truly a multi-pass defense. And unfortunately, it never came back from that.
Now, at the highest levels, the clam only serves as a change of pace defense for a point or two to get an offensive team out of its rhythm, and most teams have no problems beating it as it looks more like a zone (and is never hidden). There is actually very little to differentiate it from a zone, except for more man coverage up front. Also, 3 and 4 no longer stay with the cutter as they come in, but they try and hand off their man to 1 and 2, because they shouldn't be leaving their area (for the subsequent passes). This is where the clam usually breaks down.
Consequently, I will be proposing to my team a return to the roots of the 1 pass clam, and I have no problems posting it here because the point is, you won't recognize it on the field until it's too late. And it may very well have to occur on an out of bounds of pull, but the frequency of turns should make up for the loss of 25 yards, or it might become a default defense of clam by man when the disc is pulled out of bounds.
Thoughts?
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 5:40 PM
14 Comments:
you need the horizontal clam. the 'geoduck?'
the only time i've seen the clam work is as the 'looks like a man.'
when it's zoney, then, it's just, like, a really, really bad zone.
i suspect the initial success of the clam was related to the 4 person plays. the discipline that made them so effective might make them more succeptible to a early ambitious 'd'...
I think a really dumb 'o' works well. i.e., why run when you can walk, why create when you take, why attack when you can evade... why run 60 when you can run 3 yds, twice...
of course, such a change in philosophy, has had a somewhat negative effect on my 'd' at pick-up games...
ahem.
do you provide disincentives? or do you disincent? grammarians reply.
Coincidentally, I was out with Jimmy P and Dennis McCarthy this evening, and we were reflecting that the multi-pass clam was actually reasonably effective for a few years in the elite game(assuming that one defensive play every few points was effective). Considering that the expectation is that every point the O should score, we were looking for anything that would slant the percentages in our favor. And if we could get that first pass turnover, more power to us.
Good post Count; I learned something.
At the mythical apex of the clam, was it only used after a pull, or were there audibles/calls on the line that allowed DoG to use the clam off of turnovers or even off of play stoppages? If so, was this similarly effective to the use off of a pull?
Not QUITE sure how I should take that, but I guess glad to be of service...
We very much had audibles to do it off of stoppages, or we would call it on the line that any stoppage we were going to do a clam. Typically, clam, which became c1, c3 (for the number of passes), and then oyster for faking the clam, then only c is clam and clam is oyster, you get the drift.
I think Luke's got a good point (maybe a couple, if you count the idea that it'd be nice to have a "clam" that worked against a dance line or a split stack). Like he says, the clam is a great way to a team's first play out of a stack O. In fact, I suspect that's the way most teams use and understand/misunderstand it at this point.
Teams that try to play it for whole points end up blowing the handoffs that they are too-constantly looking for, but it's still an effective way to kill one play. The change in to spreads or better spacing from more teams makes it less effective because 3 or 4 have further to go and are more obvious, thus making them leave earlier, thus making it look like a bad zone or easily-recognizable clam/poach.
Nowadays, don't a lot of teams keep the stack short and shift it over to one side when running a standard string play? Seems like this makes it more difficult for 3 to try to intercept the pass, since the bowling-alley cut happens more quickly and since 3 has more lateral ground to cover.
Yes, the clam seems to have morphed into just
another tool for disrupting an offensive set.
Clam for horizontal sets exists, though mostly
on paper, as far as I can tell. 0,1,2 should
be virtually straight up, with fronting and shading 3,4,5,
with 6 shifting toward the slight force.
Call it the "Ham" (horizontal clam), or "Hambone"
for short.
Finally, is hiding the defense a thing of the past
(like running out grounders in baseball) or has my
long sabbatical just left me way out of touch?
It sure seems like hiding a defense is a thing of the past, at least with DoG. I can't even remember the last time we tried the double Z (zone for zero). And the clam is never disguised anymore. I will be attempting to sell the concept this fall, but who knows how receptive the D will be. Maybe the O can use it on long setup turnovers.
As for the Ham, I don't see how that differs much from a last man back. The key with the clam was to stop the in cut with the best available defender. 6 was a stopgap if it all fell apart. With the Ham you describe, 3,4,5 will all be playing man on their guy, unless 6 cuts in (and who is defined as 6, farthest person on the break side?). I'm thinking more of having a pair of front-back clams, with the 2 middle defenders playing in front and the two outside defenders playing behind their men. And the third piece is that when the disc is in the middle of the field, the defender covering the handler on the force side of the disc HAS to come off and play middle middle until the thrower passes it to that man, and then clamp on the D and you have hopefully shrunk the field in half.
Oh, and welcome back ya kiwi.
The two two-man front-back clams was one way my
team played against the horizontal. I think that can
last beyond a few throws (like an ordinary D or
the nouveau clam philosophy you describe). I
didn't describe what I meant by the Ham very well,
however. Maybe I'll address the issue in my new
blog:
zazblog
at http://zazman.blogspot.com
Ah, this brings to mind the classic Lion King song, The Circle of Blogs. Zaz, I have dutifully added you to my bloglines feed, and I noticed you wrote something about rsd, which I am in the process of commenting on, continuing the energy circle. I will ALSO be sure to link to my blog from my comment, just like Jim and Marshall did...
The Stanford women's team used a clam defense quite effectively this past year where it would be disguised as person D until the throw went off--usually right into the waiting hands of our defender. The whole team was clammoring to be able to play the strong side defender and pad their D stats as college throwers seemed unaccustomed to seeing that type of D.
My question is, what is the advantage of transitioning from clam to person after 1 pass if that first pass doesn't gain many yards and isn't a break-mark pass?
It's not necessarily an advantage, it is more protecting a disadvantage. Keep in mind, this is talking about clam usage at the elite levels. I can imagine that for a college women's team that could play an effective multi-pass clam, the benefits would far outweigh the risks (I don't see college women's teams exploiting a clam defense for a quick 2 to 5 pass goal, unlike elite men).
In the elite division, staying in clam once it is identified AND the first pass is completed (and defenders are now spread out to certain positions), just becomes a vulnerable zone. High wind, different story, but then, everything changes in high wind...
a kuma mattata? or something? how does the lion king go?
really give hyenas a bad name.
in fact, does anything give hyenas a GOOD name.
i think i'm gonna name a frisbee team the hyenas.
hyannisport hyenas?
hoboken?
As far as mascots go, i think the otter would make an excellent mascot. Clever, nimble... and the marketing tie ins are great. Kids love otters...
And a hakuna matata to you. What a wonderful phrase! Etc., etc. Anyone else worthy of being added to the circle of life?
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