Ultimate strategy (more reflections) (and now the read more works)
Wood started an excellent thread over here. I was going to comment on it over there, but I decided that I have been lacking for topics recently, although I have a few drafts going, that I decided to do my own post. At a high level, wood laments the current state of ultimate strategy when compared to certain other professional sports, in particular football. And his post was inspired by an Idris post on field sense.
One of the commenters talked at length about high-level soccer practices and strategy, saying that they are way ahead of where ultimate is right now. However, after I finished reading his comments, I didn't feel that way. I feel they may be way ahead of how to DEVELOP the instincts that Idris and wood discuss, but I don't necessarily feel that the strategy is light years ahead. Let's start from first principles.
I actually think that soccer is the best professional sport to compare to ultimate, in terms of its nonstop action, two-way players, and the wide open field with few positional restrictions. If you wanted to, you could take all 10 non-goalies and flood the front of the 'stack', but the first counterattack, and you would be scored upon (probably). In soccer, you are also trying to develop mini 2-on-1s. Soccer is a series of set plays arising from a fluid field position. The typical strategy might to send the long ball down the sideline, setting up the cross to the middle of the goal for the header goal. I would say the majority of soccer goals are scored that way (this includes a rebound off of this, or a offensive player catching the cross, passing it to another player, etc.). Obviously you have the artiste going up the middle, but it gets crowded in there. The point is how they set up to score and position themselves.
Because it has been around a lot longer than ultimate (and at a lot higher level with actual MONEY), the skills development is much farther along than ulty, so that certain repetitive actions become instinctual. Just as an example, how often has somebody come along in ultimate and taught people how to sky for a disc? At best, you might have a skying drill, but there would be no explanation of the technical aspects of going up for the disc. It was more just to practice. I often thought when Furious first got good, it was in large part because of their deep game, and they just came down with way more than half of the hospital passes. And if you ever watched them at tournaments (which is obviously the only place I saw them), they were inevitably doing individual skying drills with their buddies, with one guy putting it up to 2 or 3 of them, literally for a half hour.
You can't compare football to ultimate because of the stop and go nature of the game. Even successful offensive plays might not last more than 5 seconds, whether a pass or a run. Given the short duration of a given play, the options for adjusting what an individual does are very limited other than the quarterback. It is a chess match to try and exploit a defensive weakness, or again create 2 on 1 mini breaks by overloading one side, feints, pump fakes, etc. This is for the offense at least. Because the defense is reactive, it has to by its nature be more dynamic and ajustable. And you want to try and force the offense to go where you want them to go. Maybe for a given play, they are expecting a pass, and will set up the linebackers in x position, but they will still have enough coverage for the run. Did anybody catch the end of the KC-Dallas game last weekend? When Dallas was going for their final touchdown, they were on the one, and loaded up the line for a run. Drew Bledsoe made a great handoff fake, turned around and found a tight end WIDE open in the endzone. What was even more telling after the fact was when they zoomed in on coach Vermeil and he was SCREAMING at what I assume was the defensive coordinator for the major lapse.
The same situation occurs in ultimate defense. Because we are reacting, we are immediately at a disadvantage, and so we attempt to push the offense out of their comfort zone. Typically a defense should be able to take away at least one thing a point. Hopefully you picked the right thing, and the offense will get flustered and turn it over.
Back to football, to be like ultimate, everybody would have to be quarterback, and every time somebody got the ball, they would have to be the ones that would next lineup under the center and be QB, they wouldn't be able to get the play from the sideline but would have to call it themselves, so everybody would have to have a pretty well rounded basic set of skills unlike the extreme specialization that they have now. There is a good reason you don't see more of the halfback options. To me, it seems like a GREAT play and should be run more often, but if it had the appropriate risk/reward ratio, then you would see it more often.
As for basketball, while it was somewhat non-stop, the value of a particular score is much more devalued than in ultimate, you can only possess the ball for 24 seconds, and anyway, have you seen the NBA these days? Other than the triangle offense, when is the last time you saw things much more complicated than the pick and roll? It is a sad commentary to see how much 1 on 1 is happening these days. Also, the ability of a single player to dominate a game is much more pronounced in basketball (unless Muresan or his equivalent played ultimate, and learned to read the disc in the endzone), since other than the throw-in, he wouldn't necessarily have to EVER pass it to his teammates.
Now I'm not saying there aren't huge strides to be made in ultimate, but considering how young the sport is, I think it has done pretty well for itself in terms of its evolution in both offense and defense. Granted, I am less impressed with the current 'huck it and play D' offense that appears to be gaining converts, but we (DoG) appear to be short the athletes to truly contest that game right now.
A final thought on field sense. While I'm not sure how to develop it, it is much easier to develop it as a handler than as a receiver because
1) You get the disc more often
2) More is expected of you with the disc
3) You have more receivers available to throw to (since they are usually all upfield from you), which means more choices, AND more crowding/poaches to avoid
Consequently, you HAVE to develop it or you basically are consigning yourself to the second tier of the game. My field sense has been probably the only thing that has enabled me to play at the highest levels of the game. I definitely do not have the prettiest throws by any means, but they get there. I would worry less about how your throws look than whether your player will be able to catch it. I see these guys during warmups that are doing these totally exaggerated forehand throwing motions (that also take an extra 1/2 second to release) and chuckle to myself. While they may look pretty to the ignorant bystander, you are putting your team at a disadvantage. Hmmm, I think I can probably expand that to another post. Well, another time.
One of the commenters talked at length about high-level soccer practices and strategy, saying that they are way ahead of where ultimate is right now. However, after I finished reading his comments, I didn't feel that way. I feel they may be way ahead of how to DEVELOP the instincts that Idris and wood discuss, but I don't necessarily feel that the strategy is light years ahead. Let's start from first principles.
I actually think that soccer is the best professional sport to compare to ultimate, in terms of its nonstop action, two-way players, and the wide open field with few positional restrictions. If you wanted to, you could take all 10 non-goalies and flood the front of the 'stack', but the first counterattack, and you would be scored upon (probably). In soccer, you are also trying to develop mini 2-on-1s. Soccer is a series of set plays arising from a fluid field position. The typical strategy might to send the long ball down the sideline, setting up the cross to the middle of the goal for the header goal. I would say the majority of soccer goals are scored that way (this includes a rebound off of this, or a offensive player catching the cross, passing it to another player, etc.). Obviously you have the artiste going up the middle, but it gets crowded in there. The point is how they set up to score and position themselves.
Because it has been around a lot longer than ultimate (and at a lot higher level with actual MONEY), the skills development is much farther along than ulty, so that certain repetitive actions become instinctual. Just as an example, how often has somebody come along in ultimate and taught people how to sky for a disc? At best, you might have a skying drill, but there would be no explanation of the technical aspects of going up for the disc. It was more just to practice. I often thought when Furious first got good, it was in large part because of their deep game, and they just came down with way more than half of the hospital passes. And if you ever watched them at tournaments (which is obviously the only place I saw them), they were inevitably doing individual skying drills with their buddies, with one guy putting it up to 2 or 3 of them, literally for a half hour.
You can't compare football to ultimate because of the stop and go nature of the game. Even successful offensive plays might not last more than 5 seconds, whether a pass or a run. Given the short duration of a given play, the options for adjusting what an individual does are very limited other than the quarterback. It is a chess match to try and exploit a defensive weakness, or again create 2 on 1 mini breaks by overloading one side, feints, pump fakes, etc. This is for the offense at least. Because the defense is reactive, it has to by its nature be more dynamic and ajustable. And you want to try and force the offense to go where you want them to go. Maybe for a given play, they are expecting a pass, and will set up the linebackers in x position, but they will still have enough coverage for the run. Did anybody catch the end of the KC-Dallas game last weekend? When Dallas was going for their final touchdown, they were on the one, and loaded up the line for a run. Drew Bledsoe made a great handoff fake, turned around and found a tight end WIDE open in the endzone. What was even more telling after the fact was when they zoomed in on coach Vermeil and he was SCREAMING at what I assume was the defensive coordinator for the major lapse.
The same situation occurs in ultimate defense. Because we are reacting, we are immediately at a disadvantage, and so we attempt to push the offense out of their comfort zone. Typically a defense should be able to take away at least one thing a point. Hopefully you picked the right thing, and the offense will get flustered and turn it over.
Back to football, to be like ultimate, everybody would have to be quarterback, and every time somebody got the ball, they would have to be the ones that would next lineup under the center and be QB, they wouldn't be able to get the play from the sideline but would have to call it themselves, so everybody would have to have a pretty well rounded basic set of skills unlike the extreme specialization that they have now. There is a good reason you don't see more of the halfback options. To me, it seems like a GREAT play and should be run more often, but if it had the appropriate risk/reward ratio, then you would see it more often.
As for basketball, while it was somewhat non-stop, the value of a particular score is much more devalued than in ultimate, you can only possess the ball for 24 seconds, and anyway, have you seen the NBA these days? Other than the triangle offense, when is the last time you saw things much more complicated than the pick and roll? It is a sad commentary to see how much 1 on 1 is happening these days. Also, the ability of a single player to dominate a game is much more pronounced in basketball (unless Muresan or his equivalent played ultimate, and learned to read the disc in the endzone), since other than the throw-in, he wouldn't necessarily have to EVER pass it to his teammates.
Now I'm not saying there aren't huge strides to be made in ultimate, but considering how young the sport is, I think it has done pretty well for itself in terms of its evolution in both offense and defense. Granted, I am less impressed with the current 'huck it and play D' offense that appears to be gaining converts, but we (DoG) appear to be short the athletes to truly contest that game right now.
A final thought on field sense. While I'm not sure how to develop it, it is much easier to develop it as a handler than as a receiver because
1) You get the disc more often
2) More is expected of you with the disc
3) You have more receivers available to throw to (since they are usually all upfield from you), which means more choices, AND more crowding/poaches to avoid
Consequently, you HAVE to develop it or you basically are consigning yourself to the second tier of the game. My field sense has been probably the only thing that has enabled me to play at the highest levels of the game. I definitely do not have the prettiest throws by any means, but they get there. I would worry less about how your throws look than whether your player will be able to catch it. I see these guys during warmups that are doing these totally exaggerated forehand throwing motions (that also take an extra 1/2 second to release) and chuckle to myself. While they may look pretty to the ignorant bystander, you are putting your team at a disadvantage. Hmmm, I think I can probably expand that to another post. Well, another time.
posted by Alex de Frondeville at 7:47 PM
8 Comments:
I can understand your belief that soccer strategy isn't advanced, most people who didn't play it at a high level dont get it. My comments didn't talk about soccer strategy, but just a few points about some of its better training techniques, since that was the focus of the post. So, its understandable that my comment didn't change your view that ultimate strategy is comparable in depth to soccer strategy.
I don't have the passion to try to change your mind. However, I will point you to an excellent book on soccer tactic, Attacking Soccer by Jim's publisher, Human Kinetics.
I still think soccer strategy is more advanced (though not light-years ahead) than ultimate. More importantly than tactical strategy, however, is that Soccer has built up a knowledge of how to train certain strategies, to better integrate sub-games, like 2v1 or 3v2, into the larger game. My point still stands, it has a lot to teach ultimate about tactical training, and I'll leave it at that.
If in soccer "The typical strategy might to send the long ball down the sideline, setting up the cross to the middle of the goal for the header goal", then you'd probably argue that the typical strategy of chess is "pushing wooden pieces". :)
OK, _now_ I'll leave it at that.
Oh yeah, in the KC-Dallas game it was Gunther Cunningham, the Defensive Coordinator screamming at the linebackers coach, who's name I don't know.
I was exaggerating to make a point. Obviously the strategy in soccer is significantly more advanced than that in ultimate, but I don't think it is nearly as structured as what you find in football. Do they have set plays involving all 10 players on the field with exact routes for each player? And if they do, how often do they really run them, other than as maybe a corner kick set piece? Or is it more 3 or 4 players, with recommended positioning for the other 6. I'm just trying to compare it to the structured nature of football, where it is truly a choreographing of 11 players on the field.
Whereas in ultimate, plays off of stoppage might involve choreographing all 7 players for 2 or 3 passes, but then it devolves to team strategies or philosophies.
And yes, ultimate could CERTAINLY use significantly better training techniques, ones specifically designed for the requirements of the sport. I know Seigs has mentioned getting some specific information from the Dartmouth trainer after reviewing the sport with him, but I haven't had a chance to review the information yet.
I think we're all talking about the same thing, and mostly in agreement, in that strategy development (with respect to plays, philosophy) is a completely separate discussion from training techniques, except insofar as you develop training techniques to complement your strategy.
It's unfair to say that Alex's soccer characterization is the chess-equivalent of "pushing wooden pieces". I think the chess equivalent would be something like "create a coordinated attack on the king with multiple major pieces." That is, a perfectly reasonable strategy (not the only one), but more of a vauge idea than an instruction set. Actually, Alex mentioned a header goal, which was an oddly specific note, so maybe the chess equivalent would be "create a coordinated attack on the king with multiple major pieces, using the queen to checkmate."
Alex's broader point, that soccer's combination of preset strategy and needed improvisation is the closest to ultimate of the major sports, sounds right to me.
Finally, Alex, I'm definitely interested in the quick release discussion you broach in the final paragraph. If I may go against the grain for a second, I think a football analogy is appropriate here. One of the reasons the Indianapolis Colts have such a deadly offense is that Peyton Manning is not only very good at reading the defense, but he has a very, very quick release. This basically means that the Colts can send a lot of guys out on passing downs and leave only five or six guys to block the pass rush. This leaves Manning with relatively little time to evaluate his many options and get rid of the ball without getting sacked. But because he can generally pull it off, the defense is really on its heels with too many threats to cover and not enough time to react when the ball is thrown.
with respect to soccer and it's improvisation is similar in theory to ultimate, i have noticed that there is a certain geometry to soccer. specifically, it seems to me that the teams which can form triangles in soccer are generally more successful in moving the ball around the field to create attacking situations. the people who create that triangle may change as the ball moves around the field. at any rate, you can tell when teams lose their form that they will have trouble holding the ball or even moving it successfully. so my question is, do you think there is a shape or form that most ultimate offenses seek to attain on the field?
I think it is tougher to create this sort of triangle configuration with ultimate versus soccer, primarily because of the quicker release in soccer. Ultimate requires more time and effort to move the disc compared to touch passing the soccer ball, or letting a pass go through you, etc. In some (scary) sense, I think that Billy Berou would be better able to answer your question, or at least his strategies would fit in more with this concept.
At the simplest level, I think the teams that can successfully create/isolate space (without the other team becoming aware)are the most successful. That might be as simple as isolating the deep throw because the other 5 guys made a valid looking cut in to draw their defenders, or similar plays/philosophies.
I think the main problem with triangulation in frisbee is that the player with the disc cannot move. In soccer, I can bring my defender close to the ball, making a triangle, without worry of him leaving me to defend the passing lanes, or double-team the ball. If my defender leaves me, there is an opportunity to move the ball without passing, changing the passing lanes, and opening up a pass to me, that wasn't previously available, now that I'm unguarded.
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