Thoughts.

Scattered Thoughts:

1) Several players mention bum-rushing the defender to “get [them] on [their] heels” before making another move. That’s all well and good, but…can that really be a complete strategy? I suppose if you’re the faster cutter, it is (which of course begs the question of ‘why juke them in the first place?’). That statement really triggers my common sense detector though…there ARE defenders out there who aren’t put on their heels so easily. What then? I like to tack on “…or get him to turn
his hips” on the end of most references to “on his heels,” as I think that situation confers the same advantages to a cutter looking to gain separation.

2) I absolutely LOVE Peri Kurshan’s talk of delegating an “end zone cutter” role. Brilliant. Energy efficient, strategy efficient. And if you’re using the “one guy creating an open-side break opportunity” cutting strategy or a similar iso, this makes perfect sense, too. This also seems very easily applied in terms of strategy, which leads me to…

3) Where’s the bona fide strategy talk? I suppose the idea of this issue is more to cull pearls of wisdom for playing, particularly for the individual cutter, but I really feel like this stuff assumes you’re familiar with the conventional wisdom to some extent (or at least, it’s enhanced by such familiarity). Perhaps none of this is new to you, but much of what I write is predicated on the belief that there are people out there who are still learning.

Steve Sullivan’s mention of the “gut cut,” along with the many references to dump and swing O by several authors, alludes to probably the basic/default end zone O for many teams…cuts from the back of the stack towards the cone. On the open side, this means one guy to the cone, and a second shortly therafter in the inside line (the “gut cut”), with another (or perhaps the first to the open side, if he’s quick back) to the break side as the disc is dumped and swung. Sometimes this is a “default,” sometimes this is a set play. Depends on the team.

Other common endzone offenses include some kind of isolation play, which gets all but one of the cutters out of the way to feature a stud with enough space for a decent thrower to get the disc to the endzone somewhere stud cutter can catch it uncontested (this is the sort of situation where a lot of the cutting advice dispensed in this issue comes in handy), and a lot of teams allude to a similarly-minded offense perhaps without the overt isolation to it (front of the stack open-side break throw juke, or a cutter from the back doing something similar in the lane while the rest “keep their defenders busy”).

The final major endzone offense (at least, in my mind; feel free to chime in if you have others) I can think of is the handler-driven O. I don’t mean the simple dump-swing, or even strategies that rely upon a good break from the handler.

I mean full-on dominator style weaving, with lots of give-and-go style moves (as Nick Handler alludes to. By the way, Nick probably brings up the most salient strategy points to consider in endzone offense, for any of you aspiring coaches/play designers out there). Perhaps the give-and-go is less common at the elite level, where dump defenders presumably stop the upline cut with more regularity, but I’ve seen that cut made successfully for a score many a time at the elite college level (often by my teammates over the past years).

This tends to work in conjunction with other strategies–the iso or stack motion lets the cutters work for opportunities, but when you look to dump-swing, an aggressive handler set can look to attack the endzone without help from the cutters with the upline, too. The sort of around-the-back “break” that Ben Wiggins talks about would also be the sort of play I’d characterize as a product of a handler-driven O.

4) My own thoughts on endzone cutting: don’t just apply one of the strategies discussed in the huddle: seek to learn and apply them all. I’ve had points where my endzone cutting has been little more than recognizing my defender’s open-side overzealousness and using a chop-step (or a straight-up opportunity cut) to catch a hammer to the break side wide open, and I’ve had points where I’ve run my defender into the ground from the stack, and I’ve had points where recognizing and exploiting the “open-side break” opportunities led to easy goals. The key is recognizing what’s available to you–when your teammates are aggressively cutting from the back of the stack, try to wait and find your opportunity. When nothing’s doing, consider creating some motion and injecting some energy with the brute-force approach (with appropriate tricks employed to increase your odds).