Fury's defense will ignore your weakest link
Fury's defense will ignore your weakest link
Belichick-ian strategy from frisbee's best team
NFL coach Bill Belichick is famous for a strategic commitment to stopping the other team from doing what they do best (see here or here). In San Francisco Fury's 2022 national championship game loss and their recent 2024 finals win, they showed a defensive willingness to devote more resources to their opposition's best player and ignore their least-threatening players to an extent that's not usually seen in high-level ultimate frisbee.
2022
Fury used this tactic in the 2022 final, consistently poaching off of handler Saioa Lostra in the 2nd half of the game. Fury's thinking here appears to have been: "we'd much rather have Lostra throw downfield than give Valeria Cardenas open throws downfield, even if that means Lostra is wide open for a reset pass every time."
Here Finney starts poaching immediately after Fury turns the disc over on a huck:
Again here Finney poaches aggressively right from the start of the point:
Most of the time it was Carolyn Finney who played this poach role, but at least once Anna Thompson took part as well (I like how she pretends she’s not going to poach, then immediately starts playing a different defense once the disc is tapped into play):
Their strategy had mixed results. On the one hand, Lostra threw a few turnovers (one in the video above—the play was ruled not a foul—and one in the video below at the end of the article). On the other hand, Molly Brown was sometimes able to move the disc downfield quite easily.
With Molly Brown up 13-11 near the end of the game, a poached Lostra caught a scoober that was *this* close to being the turnover Fury needed to bring it to a one-score game (in fact, watching it in slow motion, I tend to believe it was actually down):
Here’s a few screenshots from the videos above:
2024
In the 2024 final, Fury's strategy seemed slightly less systematic but still happened a number of times. In contrast to 2022, their 2024 thought process seemed to be "we really shouldn't let their best cutters get open in the deep space."
Here we see Dena Elimelech letting Fury catch an easy 10-yard gain in order to play help defense on a deep cut off-screen:
A few points later, Shayla Harris does the same:
They continue using the same strategy as late as a 12-10 score:
I think this example above is especially notable: Dena Elimelech is jogging deep as the cutter she's "guarding" is cutting under. Stopping Perivier’s deep cut is more important to her than shutting down her own assignment.
This following clip, from early in the game, is also provocative. At one point (pause the video at 28:39) Fury has three players who are all multiple yards deeper than Scandal's deepest cutter. A player makes an under cut for a 15-yard gain in front of Harris and Elimelech, and they both just stand there watching her:
Countermeasures
How would I deal with this strategy? I agree with announcer Katie Killebrew who suggested more give-and-gos:
When you have the disc unmarked, that's not a sign that you should stand there waiting until the perfect pass becomes available. You can't run with the disc in frisbee, but you can run without it. Get rid of the disc and sprint to get it back. Give-and-go are also effective when you're the one throwing to a poached player. Throw to a poached teammate and then run to get the disc back. Since they're unmarked they'll be able to use whatever release angle they need to get you the disc. And the faster the poached player gets rid of the disc, the faster they can start running again.
I'd also just recommend more small ball in general. Finney's poaching in 2022 worked because Molly Brown was looking for longer passes. There's simply less lane to poach in when throwing a five yard pass compared to a twenty-yard pass. Not to mention that this strategy is going to be used against one of your team's weaker throwers—let them throw short, safe passes after getting the disc instead of playing right into the defense's strategy:
Final thoughts
Look...There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.
While Scandal weren't exactly stopped cold by Fury's defensive tactics, they weren't fully prepared to take advantage of them, either. Once could be an exception, but Fury doing this twice shows us a pattern. Any team planning to beat Fury in 2025 should come ready to deal with having one of their offensive players ignored.