Endzone O

One of the coolest things about my office is that pretty much every day there's an ultimate game happening just outside. This is especially neat for me since I played collegiate disc on that very spot oh so many years ago. Many days on my way out I stop and watch what's going on. I guess if I could drop the spare 50 pounds I'm carrying I might even step in, but its been a long time since I've been in an actual game.

Today I emerged from Purnell to see this endzone drill underway. I can only assume it was Yuk, because casual pickup usually doesn't involve drills.

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't really even know where to begin. I might have even said something to them except I remember what I would have told an old buttinski when I was a college player. So I will just rant about it here and maybe it will work its way back to them - or maybe you will learn something about ultimate you didn't know before and that will be the end of that.

Just for starters, cutting off the front of the stack is lousy. It's clogged and doesn't give you much set up. Also from a fairly basic place, lateral cuts aren't great. When you're cutting from side to side you're clogging everyone behind you. This play they were practicing does both of those things, it cuts laterally off the front. It's possible it's set up as an isolation for that one guy, so maybe the rest doesn't matter - I'll get to that in a minute. Additionally here the guys set up for the dump are set up clogging. The feature guy has to cut right into one or the other of his teammates on the wings. It'd be way too easy if you were one of their defenders to just sag into the end zone and poach the pass; doing so is nearly free because if they pick up the poach all they get is a dump anyway. Speaking of the planned dumps, these aren't great. They're too shallow and wide, so if you have to go there all of a sudden you've brought in their eight defender - the sideline.

The way the play is set up, the feature either cuts behind the force or laterally with the force. If he goes with the force, that's what their defense is set up to stop; so the defender is likely in position to make the play. If he goes behind the force, he's making you throw a tough break-mark pass, probably a low righty backhand riser. If you can make the throw it's a decent play, but it isn't an easy throw to get off - if the mark plays wide enough for you to get it off at all. My experience is that the closer to the goal line, the more straight up the mark plays, making that thow that much harder.

The only time any of this is going to work is during the drill, and that's because the defenders willingly play their part. The practicing isn't going to help much for game situations.

But maybe it is supposed to run as an isolation. If that's the case, it ought to look more like this:

This way you clear all the traffic and give your receiver the entire end zone to work with. Also the dumps don't set up clogging and their defenders are in no position to poach (and the dump passes are deeper and more acute so as to keep play more in the middle of the field. This would work, although it's still real congested. Probably the standard end zone offense would work better.

"What's the standard offense?" you ask. I'm glad you did. It looks like this:

The offense sets up stacked vertically in the end zone, shading behind the marker. The true design of this play is to go to option two, cutting off the back of the stack hard for the front corner. You will notice though that it does still feature that off the front of the stack break mark pass in option one. This is there if the mark is sleeping, but the design doesn't require you to depend on breaking the mark it's just there in case it presents itself. If not that cutter continues in the dead space behind the mark and goes for a fairly steep dump. Option three is for if the marker slides over to take away option two. If he reaches across to take away the long open side then you have a fairly easy break mark to the short side. This set up also gives you two dumps without clogging. Option four and option five give you good dumps without bringing you to the sideline.

Plus, if you take the dump pass, you immediately have someplace to go...

This gets a little hard to read because it's showing two possible throwers, depending on which dump the first thrower got. Moving ahead the first primary receiver clears up the line to the dump and the short side receiver clears into the middle with the original thrower. It's possible at this point to get a quick give and go with the first thrower, but that's just sort of normal ultimate and not part of the design of the offense, but if you get it you can take it. As soon as the dump throw is off, the two remaining players who started by clearing to the back repeat each of the two front corner cuts from the first iteration. Once again you should have an open with the force option, an open break the force option, and two dump passes. If you haven't scored by then you've probably either backed up far enough that you can stop thinking about it as end zone offense or you turned it over.

So there it is, standard end zone offense in a nutshell. Now go, and don't clog.