What the first principle of defense suggests about offense.

“What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.”

-Sun Tzu

In previous posts, I have tried to construct the defense that logically follows from the premise found in the first principle of defense: when the disc is in motion, the offense has the advantage; when the disc is at rest, the defense is able to gain the advantage.  In this post, I will examine what sort of offense would logically follow from that premise.

First, it is important to note that a disc at rest is a necessary condition for the defense to gain the advantage, but it is not sufficient.  In other words, there can be plenty of good offenses that allow the disc to be held for long periods by a single player.  If a team chooses this static offensive strategy, however, they must acknowledge that they have opened the door for a well designed defense to gain the advantage over them.  And this door, once opened, can be difficult to shut.

Given this, my offensive strategy is based around moving the disc quickly before the defense is able to set up.  Whenever the disc moves, the defense needs time to set up properly. Accordingly, the offenses best opportunities will occur during this time.  As long as the disc is moving, the defense must react to its motion.  The better the defense, the quicker the reaction. But, every defense will lag behind the offense they are reacting to somewhat.

Impatient anteater refuses to let his defense lag behind.

"Okay," you say, "I get it.  Let's move the disc.  But, where should we move it?"  Obviously, all things being equal, we'd like the offense to move downfield toward the endzone we are attacking.  Strangely enough, all things are not equal.  Different defenses will bother different throws.  This is up to the individual thrower to decide which throw offers the highest expected value.  

What is important in this decision, however, is for the thrower to consider what the defense wants him to do.  It isn't very difficult to tell what most defenses want you to do as a thrower. They will force you to either throw a forehand or a backhand.  For this discussion of offense, I will assume the more common forehand force.  Now that this has been decided, we know that the defense wants us to throw to the forehand side.  

Our opponent has given us a great deal when this forehand force is revealed.  We now know that the defense will look to cut the field in half by positioning their marker in the way of our thrower's normal backhand.  The field defenders will then play one or more steps closer to the forehand side of the field in an attempt to better contest the throws that should go there.  This is our enemy's strategy.  How do we attack it?

We attack it by breaking the mark at every conceivable opportunity.  Unless we have an amazing opportunity to do what the defense wants us to do, we should look to do exactly what they don't want us to do.  For example, we should throw to the forehand side of the field if the receivers are uncontested and the yardage is good.  This is too good of an opportunity to pass up because the throw to the forehand side is basically undefended.  Combine an undefended throw with an undefended cut and you'll see great offensive efficiency.

Most defenses, however, do an okay job of contesting a lot of the cuts on the forehand side of the field.  In this case, the offenses goal should not be to force a throw into the strength of the defense.  Instead, the offenses goal should be to throw into the weakness of the defense (the backhand side of the field.  The backhand side of the field must be the defenses weakness because the field defenders are giving up 1 or more steps on cuts to that area.

How do we attack the defense's weakness?  We break the mark.  Breaking the mark can be done any number of ways, but the easiest is to pivot so that you are facing the marker squarely, then throw around or over him.  Fakes help a great deal in this spot.  The nice thing about breaking the mark is that your receiver will likely be uncontested on the break side and so should catch a halfway decent break throw almost 100% of the time (provided it actually gets to him).

Catching a break throw is so easy, even this actor could do it.

There are two basic breaks: for yardage and position, and just for position.  When you throw a break for yardage and position, it has to be a pretty good throw because more defenders will be in the vicinity.  When you throw a break just for position (aka a dump), it just has to get there.

The break itself does not often destroy a defense.  And how could it?  Most often, the break will not gain any yards.  The throw that directly follows the break is the one that can destroy a defense.  This is because the throw following the break can be to receivers who have a massive advantage over the field defenders.  In essence, while the defense was initially cutting down the field to half of its original size through the force, the break allows the offense to have the entire field to work with.  Field defenders are caught in no man's land as their angles of defense are completely inadequate to respond to the receivers new potential angles of attack.

Of course, if an offense waits for a few seconds after a break throw, then the defense can recover. The field defenders will readjust their angles of defense to account for the new disc position and the new marker will position himself in such a way as to cut off half the field.  This is why it is so important that the receivers time their cuts so that they begin just as the break throw is being caught.  This is also known as flow.  The break throw plus cut for big yardage on the break side is the nightmare scenario of every man-to-man defensive scheme that employs a traditional force (ie most of them).

So, the first principle of defense suggests two things about offense.

1. The offense should move the disc as quickly as possible.

2. The offense should try at all times to avoid the defense's strength and attack the defense's weakness.