Fury's fast breaks
Fast breaking: strategy of champions
A year ago in late 2023, I looked at Boston Brute Squad's fast break tendencies. Watching 2024 Nationals I was impressed by how San Francisco Fury looked to fast break, as well. (If you haven't already, read Why I like fast breaks for a more thorough explanation of why I favor fast breaking.)
I went through Fury's 2024 semifinal and finals games and noted what happened any time their defense earned a turnover.
In summary:
In their final against DC Scandal:
21 total turnovers
9 turns: the disc ended up deep in the endzone and/or far enough out of bounds that I'd never really expect a fast break1
6 turns: the disc ended up on the ground and Fury fast breaks
3 turns: the disc end up on the ground and Fury didn't fast break
3 turns: D's caught by Fury leading to natural fast breaks
In their semifinal against Denver Molly Brown:
25 total turnovers (*the stats page says 26. I must've missed one in my rewatch but it doesn't seem worth it to do another full rewatch just to find one turnover)
6 turns: the disc ended up deep in the endzone, far out of bounds, or an injury was called making a fast break impossible
7 turns: the disc ended up on the ground and Fury fast breaks
4 turns: the disc end up on the ground and Fury didn't fast break
8 turns: D's caught by Fury leading to natural fast breaks
If we ignore the turnovers where fast breaks were nearly impossible, Fury fast breaks after about 75% of the turnovers they earn (9/12 in the final, 15/19 in the semifinal).
Even if we ignore the caught D's (which naturally lead to fast breaking), Fury fast breaks about 2/3rds of the time when the disc ends up on the ground in the field of play (6/9 in the final, 7/11 in the semifinal).
Here are a few examples that stood out for one reason or another:
This fast break in the semis nets Fury about 60 yards in a few seconds, though an unlucky slip leads to them turning the disc over instead of completing an easy score:
This next fast break really highlights Fury's commitment to their strategy. Even though they have this somewhat embarrassing turnover on the first pass of this fast break early in the semifinal, they stick to the fast breaking strategy through the rest of the game and the championship game:
They trust the overall effectiveness of their strategy and stick with it, understanding it won’t work literally 100% of the time.
Here's a turnover that's caught by Fury, which leads to some immediate disc movement with the offense in an amorphous blob, but it gets them ~20 yards pretty quickly:
I like this one for just how quickly Fury's Kirstin Johnson rips the disc off the turf:
Here's another good example of the power of the fast break. It takes Finney 2-3 seconds to find an open receiver after picking the disc up, but once that happens the offense is pretty much in flow, throwing to nothing but open receivers until the disc is in the endzone:
I think this next clip was one of Fury's biggest missed opportunities of the semifinal game. There was a clear opportunity to make forward progress, with many Molly Brown defenders out of position after a backfield turnover:
This game-ending fast break in the semifinals was already highlighted in my article on Fury's early stall count hucks:
Here's one from the final that I thought was another of Fury's missed opportunities to fast break. The two Fury players closest to the disc both take off deep (which is at least fast-break-adjacent; at least they're not just strolling towards a stack), but I think they had a chance to pick up the disc and give-and-go with five defensive players behind them:
Here's another from the final that really highlights the power of fast-breaking. Fury goes about 60 yards in two wide-open throws because they're not afraid to start fast without setting up:
I get the feeling some players on Fury (Carolyn Finney especially) feel more comfortable fast-breaking than others. Fury is generally good at fast-breaking after turnovers in the handler space, but a few of their missed opportunities (not all included here) were "post-huck fast break" situations. Maybe their "handlers" feel more comfortable fast breaking while some of the players who see themselves as "cutters" (and/or players who are newer additions to Fury?) are a little more reluctant to pick up the disc.
Final thoughts
There's not really anything in this article I haven't written about before, but I felt it was worth stressing one more time that fast breaks are good and good teams are using them. Frisbee culture often trends towards a mindset of "do what everyone else is doing". So it's worth pointing out that nowadays, good teams are fast breaking. Don't get stuck in the frisbee "meta" of 15 years ago.
Look, if you're New York PoNY, and you're facing a Rhino Slam! team that turns the disc over twice in an entire game, I can understand not caring that much about being good at fast breaks. But in a game with 20+ turnovers—which is most levels of frisbee—it's absolutely worth it to get all the advantage you can out of fast breaks.
Even against a team like Rhino Slam!, there’s still reason to prefer fast breaking if we look at things on a larger scale. Sure, they only had 2 turnovers against PoNY, but over the course of their 6 games at Nationals they turned the disc over 43 times.
In the UFA, even the stingiest team turns the disc over 150+ times per season. That's 150 chances to take advantage of an out-of-position defense.
I do think there are sometimes opportunities to transition with speed even when the disc ends up deep in the endzone. But the opportunities are generally smaller and the risks are somewhat larger.