Zone: Defensive Skills
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Loading ...Again, a feel for space and motion is a huge help.
I feel like zone defense is much more prone to specialization than offense, so I’ll try and break it down by role.
Cup/wall/chase
- Legs. A tired cup is a beaten one.
- Bids. While the backfield is more a question of height, the front is much more about width–you don’t need to bid all over the place, but being able to *threaten* it is often enough (this usually means showing that you can do it so the other team will respect it enough not to test). Alternatively, you can practice baiting the layout D.
- Reading the thrower. This is something of an art–knowing when a thrower might try and test you with a pass through the cup (or over), when he’s committed to his dump and you can be a little more aggressive trying to shut it down, etc. If you can recognize the “locked in” look, you can cause a lot of trouble.
- Anticipation/reaction time. This is closely tied to the above. Anticipating a throw means you’ll respond that much quicker, and having a short trigger from on your toes to laying out/reaching for the D is always a plus.
Backfield (short)
- Legs. Not as much running as the cup, usually, but you need to be there too.
- Range. You’re responsible for covering space, and need to be able to make a play on passes into it. It’s also necessary for a zone set that baits a cross-field pass to D–if you can’t cover ground quickly you’re likely not going to get the D.
- Knowing one’s range. Perhaps more important than having range is knowing what your range is. It’s one thing to take a rask on a throw that’s right on the edge of your range (really, this is what baiting means), it’s another to think you have somebody covered only to see them get the disc with ease and shred the zone. Knowing your range means recognizing the conditions and the thrower, and falls under that catch-all umbrella of “field sense.”
- Communication. A cup can get pretty far without too much talking (short of trap and change to man calls), but dealing with dynamic threats in the backfield means the more you can coordinate with your teammates, the better.
Backfield (deep)
- Range. Wings/deeps cover even more space. This is compensated for somewhat by the extra time on throws deep, but don’t forget about blades/quick-breaking hammers.
- Knowing one’s range. The consequences for getting burned deep are severe.
- Ups/height. Much moreso than other positions, the deep NEEDS to be able to establish air dominance. Whether that’s being tall enough to make handlers think twice, having jaw-dropping ups, or simply showing, time and again, consistent superiority of positioning on deep throws, all zones hinge on the fact that deep throws are hard, and a good deep has to make this so.
- Communication. A deep-deep in any zone is a de facto field general, directing the D’s response to threats and managing deep coverage (again, a dominant deep presence helps with this). Wing types have less of a burden to shoulder here, and generally only need to coordinate coverage handoffs with the rest of the backfield.
So, how do you work on these things?
The athletic components are a simple matter of hard work and conditioning.
For sensing space & time / field sense, I refer you to my recommendations in the last post. Naturally, observe the defense more than the offense, but understanding what one side of the disc wants to do will give you a good sense of what the other should want to stop.
Communication and knowing your limits comes with experience. The wider the breadth of situations you get involved with, the better prepared you’ll be, and the more you push your limits and fail, the better you’ll get to know them.
Reading the thrower and anticipation come with experience too, but to some extent you can cultivate both by watching. The “I’m about to huck” gaze down the field is a particularly strong tell in most players.
I can’t think of a whole lot else to say here. Feel free to chime in with your own views/experiences.
Another for the Cup:
Head Swivelability – a good cup gets to where the blueprint strategy dictates quickly and as a unit but the better cup is made of individuals who are always looking for where the O players actually are. Sometimes you just have to sprint to the spot but if you know where the threats are, you can move smarter. Same with defending crashes.
This skill is essential to D in general, but it seems that players forget its importance while in the cup (or perhaps its just that the cup often consists of less experienced players.)
Ah, that is an essential one indeed.
I think part of it comes from inexperience; part of it is also, i think, a natural tendency to key in on the disc to the exclusion of the rest of what’s going on. It’s easy to think, “hey, if I watch the thrower the whole time, I can react to anything he tries to do,” and while you CAN react, you’re typically better off being proactive and stopping the throw before it’s even begun (or being aware of where the throw will go even before he winds up to make it, if you’re looking to bait).
…and of course that habit is built playing man D in which the mark doesn’t have to look at the rest of the O players at all. Some of the best marks on our team look ONLY at a thrower’s hips and the disc. (maybe he listens to “inside” and “around” calls).
This leads me to wonder if there are good Zone D players who are not good Man D players and if we might be able to train players to fill niche roles in the cup as opposed to just training them general. Just a curious little thought.
Re: good Zone D players who aren’t good Man D players…
It’s absolutely possible. I’ve seen it. Socks made the team on his mark (particularly as the 1 in a 1-3-3), and went from “that was the worst man D I’ve ever seen” (captain’s comment) to a shutdown defender (especially handler d) and essential handler for our D line last year.
Nice roles in the cup (etc) are great projects for your bottom players. Especially given how big a boon fresh legs can be in those positions, it’s probably a better use of their talents than riding the pine all season/series long.