Your D-Line Is Not Your O-Line

This is sort of a mesh together of my experiences playing for Fakulti at NUFL1 and browsing over slides from UCPC.

Your D-line is not your O-line. Sounds really simple, but has pretty far-reaching implications. For a team like Fakulti - and, I'm presuming, any elite team - the offence (don't matter if it relies on big hucks with massive takes from 6"11 playmakers or a speedy in-cut game like Buzz) is worked out. Tweaked. Taken apart, worked with, tested to see what works and what doesn't. It can take weeks or a season or many seasons to find out what works best for your team and their skillsets. You'll find that D players will participate in this O structuring, and it will rub off on them. But:

Your D-line is not your O-line. Ultimate is all about recognising weakness and exploiting it. For a defence, the biggest single weakness to exploit is the seconds immediately surrounding a turnover. The regimented, start-from-the-stack, lets-call-a-play (could be an isolation, could just be 'horro') option merely gives the opposition the chance to adjust and recall how to play defence.

I can recall two contrasting experiences with the same club in the same season: Fakulbee, at Nationals, calling an isolation play after a turnover and getting nowhere, is one, whereas Fakulti, at NUFL, using the fast break and scoring 5-6 goals with almost sickening ease. This isn't just because one team was better than the other - the iso play was working, after all - but because it shows two approaches to a D-line offence; one static, one dynamic.

Ben Wiggins has some slides up on the UCPC website. I wasn't at UCPC so I have no idea what they actually meant or what he said to describe them, but the important lesson I learned from them was about converting with your D line. The D-line should exploit the fast break. That doesn't mean a speccy huck to the endzone with marker on the disc, either. It just means getting the disc moving as quickly as possible, with the aim being to catch the opposition's O-line defence off-guard. That isn't all: the D-line should look for - or at least consider - options a disciplined offence would not necessarily choose: the breakside hammer to the endzone, high floaty break throws to achieve power position, the works. Unconventional, unorthodox methods of moving the disc achieve a greater degree of viability precisely because your defenders are not defensive players.

Once play becomes stagnant and starts to resemble the ho/vert stack of your O-line, it doesn't mean your team isn't going to convert, it just means that the advantage you were given is now nullified.

T.