My philosophies on: playing defense
bullet points on a variety of defensive topics
A little while back I did a post summarizing my thoughts on playing offense. So it would make sense to do the same for playing defense. Here, in bullet point form, is a summary of how I think about playing defense. Some ideas have been the topic of a full post already; some haven't but may be some day. And some are not interesting/novel enough for me to touch on them any more than the bullet point they get here.
I started my post on offense by saying "good offense comes from good players", and I'd say the same thing pretty much applies here. "Chemistry" isn't some magical thing that appears when seven mediocre players make the attempt to work together. Become the type of individual player who brings chemistry to every team you join. The concepts require teamwork but the teamwork requires individuals who have developed the mental & physical skills to make teamwork happen.
The one goal
Defense is for stopping the other team. Frisbee is a team sport. The only thing that matters to a defense is: did the other team score, or did they turn it over? You don't get a gold star because it wasn't "your" "assignment" who caught a score. You don't get bonus points because you stayed within 2 meters of your person for 20 seconds straight. You only goal is to maximize the probability that the other team turns it over before they score.
In other words: play team defense. Play help defense. Play "help the helper" defense.
Although there is one small way in which this "maximize turnover probability" goal isn't your true goal as a defender: the truest goal is not to get a certain number of turns, it's to win the frisbee game. It doesn't really matter if a team scores 10 wide-open goals, because all you (theoretically) need is to generate 5 turnovers to win 15-10. It's not necessarily an indictment of a defensive scheme if it sometimes leads to what looks from the outside like "easy scores". Some apparently easy scores are totally fine as long as a defensive strategy is going to lead to sufficient offensive mistakes over the course of a game.
Another comment on your one true goal of getting turnovers: there's nothing inherently good about being one step behind your assignment. It's "easy" to never give up a "wide-open" pass if you just follow someone wherever they go. But there's no inherent difference between someone making a catch with a defender one step away and them making the same catch with a defender ten steps away. Neither of those is a turnover.
Admittedly, there are some benefits to being only a few steps behind—you're in position to get a D if a pass floats a bit too much, for example. But theoretically, a team could never turn the disc over even if you're just one step behind on every single pass1. (And I think this is one of the failure modes of "always stay tight to your person defense"—you may stay close to them, but because you're always reacting, you may never end up close enough.)
Don't try to figure out how to be one step behind all of the time. Figure out how to be zero steps behind, some of the time. Even if that means you're 10 steps behind on some other passes.As people say about NBA centers and NFL cornerbacks: the best defenders aren't necessarily the ones making highlight plays. Good defense can look boring (at least to the people making highlight videos).
Priorities & defending the endzone
The offense is going to complete passes against you (Don't plan for perfection). Don't gameplan to stop them from completing every pass. Game plan to stop them from completing the passes you don't want them to complete.
I'm of the opinion that even in high-level frisbee, the simplest example of what you should and shouldn't give up is still one of the best strategies: make it hard for the offense to get close to the end zone. Even if that means you make it easier for the offense to go backwards.
The offense only gets a point for catching the disc in the end zone. Make it hard for the offense to catch passes in the endzone, even if that means you make other things slightly easier.
Make it hard for a cutter to gain big yards (going deep), even that means you make it easier for them to gain small yards (catch an under).
Good defense is having a good intution for how much you can take away here without giving up an even worse option over there (i.e. downfield or in the endzone)
Sag off the reset handler just enough that they're discouraged from attempting an upline cut, while still staying close enough to force them to lose as many yards as possible on a dump pass. They can only go back for so long before they run out of space.
Obviously the biggest complicating factor here is wind & thrower skill. Long passes are harder and riskier, so there's some logic to forcing the offense to throw them. But in my opinion, on average, frisbee culture tends to give up big gains too easily.
To put it another way: some frisbee players/teams use the term "last back" as a name for a specific defense. I think the "last back" mentality is a philosophy that should never really leave you: when you end up as one of the deeper players in the defense, you are always responsible for helping your team avoid giving up an easy deep completion.
Related to the topic of defending the end zone: most high-level offenses have set plays but you should be embarrassed if you fall for them. Are you really surprised that the offense is trying to generate an open pass to the end zone???
Pulling
Defense starts with the pull. Good pulling is a big part of good defense. There's lots more I could say here, like:
Developing better pulls is potentially the easiest way for you to become a more effective defender.
The goal of pulling is to put the offense in the worst possible position to score. A 70-yard pull isn't better than pulling the disc out of bounds if your defense isn't there to defend and you immediately give up 25-yards of uncontested yardage to the offense. More hangtime is just as important as more yardage.
The defense sprinting 60 yards to start a point, and doing it 60+ times in a tournament weekend, is potentially adding a lot of work for that defense.
In other words: contrary to a lot of announcers I hear on streamed games, I think pulling out of bounds often isn't that bad. Aim to pin a team on the sideline—the worst that happens is they get the disc on the brick mark, facing an in-position defense. The best that happens is you immediately trap the offense against the sideline.
Positioning
I generally hate playing defense on the under side of the person I'm guarding, unless I know I have help deep. I feel it's just too important to be able to see the field, and I'm denying myself too much information by being on the under side. I can discourage deep looks by being positioned on the deep side, while the fact I'm facing towards the under space means that I can pressure run-thru D's by quickly accelerating forward in the direction I'm facing.
If I do end up playing "deny the under" defense, I try to position myself horizontally to the side of the cutter I'm guarding, so I still have a chance of seeing the disc, instead of completely on the under side.
And I *hate* faceguarding in pretty much all its forms. It might work at some levels but good players know how to get you into a position where you have no information about what's happening, and then use thrower-led passes to get the disc to your player before you have time to react.
I like to think of defense in terms of what I discussed in Defense is for stopping the other team as something like a "threat equalization principle". If throwing a pass to the person you're guarding would have an expected value of 0.5 points for the offense, and throwing a deep shot would have an expected value of 0.7 points for the offense, you should want to be further from your person, and closer to a spot where you might help stop a deep look. Every option for the offense should be equally bad. If throwing to your person is a really bad idea at the same time that throwing somewhere else is a really good idea, you're playing defense wrong—you're too close to them.
Why you shouldn't always play tight defense is a very important post for my defensive philosophy. I've covered many of that post's ideas here in different ways. One that I haven't yet and want to focus on now is making the thrower uncertain. I'm always trying to get myself just far enough into a passing lane to make the thrower unsure of what their best option is. But at the same time I'm not usually trying to let my assignment catch an easy pass, either—I want to recover back towards my person as soon as the thrower looks at them, so the thrower's also unsure whether they're open. Call it "micro-poaching", or "micro-baiting". Call it the frisbee version of what basketball calls 'stunt and recover'. Good defenders are always trying to bait throws, at least a little bit.
Good defense is about making constant adjustments to your positioning—frisbee people often call this orbiting. As I come from playing basketball, I don't tend to think of what I do as orbiting. I mostly just think of it as "playing good defense", but if I had to give a name to it, I might say "triangulating". At any moment, you want to know:
The location of the disc
The location of your man
Where the endzone is
Where the throwing lanes are
Where other players are
Where open spaces are that the offense wants to attack
Taking all that into consideration, you then find the position where you can take away as much as possible from the offense. "Orbiting" is just one part of that, in my opinion.
Footwork is so important to good defense. But honestly I think about footwork when your opponent is inactive perhaps more than I think about the footwork used to play defense against jukes in small spaces2. Being able to backpedal/shuffle while your assignment is jogging down the field is a magical key to playing defense with better awareness. When a cutter is jogging down the field and their defender is looking only at them & jogging behind them in their wake, I immediately know I'm not watching an elite defender.
As others have said before: the best person defense starts to look like zone; the best zone defense starts to look like person.
General meta-strategy
The defense would prefer to confuse the offense, so it makes sense to switch between different defensive schemes, the same way a pitcher uses different pitches or an NFL defense uses a new play every down. However, I do worry that the skill level and time commitment in frisbee isn't high enough to play multiple defenses at a high enough level. So this preference for confusing the offense should be weighed against your ability to play multiple different styles at a high enough level. Sometimes it's enough to commit to doing one thing well (think: unlike the NFL, NBA teams don't vary their defense as much play-to-play but rather rely on a consistent set of principles to make things as hard as possible on the offense).
Ian's article on triggers is one of my favorite pieces by him. IMO this is a still very under-developed part of frisbee culture. More teams need to learn to adjust their defense dynamically based on the current situation on the field—denying harder when the disc is near the sideline, or denying harder when a certain player has the disc, for example.
As I've written before, too many frisbee teams are still stuck in a mindset that defensive intensity and defensive complexity trade off against each other. For too many people, "Play hard defense" means playing "focus only on your own man" defense. In pro sports like the NBA and NFL, strategic complexity is no excuse for lowering the intensity of defense. I think in the future (and among some of the top teams now) we'll see defenses that bring high intensity while also requiring a high level smarts, adaptation, and awareness.
An example of this: I think teams should be able to play high-pressure person defense while still being smart about finding opportunities to help teammates and not give up wide-open deep shots: There's still alpha in help defense
Bill Belichick is famous for making it hard for other teams to do what they like to do. Frisbee teams need to get better at doing the same—see Fury's defense will ignore your weakest link. Force the O-line's 7th best player to have a big game.
Defense and offense are inherently opposed to each other. Offense wants to create space, so the defense should clog space. Offense wants to throw easy throws, so defense should encourage hard throws. Offense wants to keep the disc off the sideline, so defense should clog the center of the field while allowing passes to the sideline somewhat more easily. etc etc. Anytime the person you're guarding does something, you need to fight the urge to "go along with it" any more than you have to (but, yes, sometimes you do have to!). If they clear to the sideline, chase them only as far as you need to. etc.
A slide from a college basketball team’s philosophy document that someone sent me a while back — whatever the offense wants, the defense should not want. Some examples apply quite easily to frisbee.
Random — zone, force middle, transition, marking
Since the person with the disc can't move, they're often the last person you want to guard. Don't guard them after they've caught the pull if they're just going to pass it to a wide open teammate. Don't guard them near the endzone if it means they're just going to throw a goal to a wide-open teammate (everyone knows this one, I know). I'm not sure frisbee theory has completely figured out all the ways to take advantage of the thrower's inability to move. (More no-mark zones to kill time when you're winning?)
I've still never fully understood the appeal of force middle defenses. Offenses like space, so it makes more sense to me to try to keep an offense trapped on the sideline than to try to keep them trapped in the middle of the field. Perhaps part of what makes them effective is the way they contrast to the offensive meta (e.g. 1: many teams run vert stack, force middle makes it so that's the last place you want people hanging around in. 2: players are trained to look to continue the disc's momentum, while force middle seems like it would be vulnerable to sending the disc back towards where it came from.)
In basketball, everyone knows that when the offense is bringing the ball down the court, you get back on defense first and guard your own man only after that.
I play frisbee the same way, and I pretty much never see other frisbee players, even elite ones, doing this.
When someone throws a 20-yard under, you shouldn't be jogging downfield at whatever speed your matchup is jogging. You should be trying to beat them downfield so you can clog up the throwing lanes as much as possible for a few seconds until your man gets back to the play.
You'll see defenders do this sometimes after hucks, but almost no one ever does after random 20-30 yard gainers. I'll probably write an article someday highlighting opportunities to do this.One of my biggest pet peeves that I've never written about is when people tell the cup in a zone defense that "the cup should stay together". The goal of a defense is not to stay 3m away from the player next to you in the cup. The goal is to stop the offense from making progress. If slowing down the offense means accelerating away from your cup-mates (and it sometimes does!), then that's what you should do.
The other biggest mistake I often see among players who generally know what they're doing in a zone defense is being too slow to respond when the disc moves. As soon as a pass leaves a thrower's hand, you should be3 getting to the spot you want to be in once that pass is caught and the next thrower looks to make a pass.
The difference between a mediocre zone D and an elite zone D is often whether players can avoid the temptation to ball-watch while the disc is in the air and instead force themselves to start re-positioning as soon as a pass is released.
Defense is often a mental challenge as much as a physical challenge, and this is a great example of that. Great defense is staying ever-vigilant and teaching your brain not to succumb to the temptation to be lazy, even for a second.I'm of the opinion that players often try to do too much as a mark defender. How often do you actually see point blocks in high-level frisbee? Once every 100 passes? Once every 200? 400? For every clip of a hand block you can show me, I'd bet I can show you an example of a mark defender putting themselves out of position in the attempt to make a highlight-reel play. Is putting yourself in bad position 20 times really worth one turnover?
Marking is probably the part of defense that I'm least confident I've "figured out". There are probably times it's best to mark tight; times it's best to mark loose; time it's best to not waste your energy on the mark and other times where an active mark is very helpful to the team. But I'm not sure I do the best job of figuring those opportunities out in real time. IMO, anyone giving you overly generalized marking advice is probably wrong.
That being said, if I had to offer one piece of advice, it's that most players don't look around (downfield or at the dump space) enough when they're marking. Knowing for yourself where the threats are and where there's no threats allows you to shut down options you might otherwise be afraid to commit to stopping.Give-and-gos are a powerful offensive weapon, but with the right combination of mental and physical tools they're not impossible to stop: Defending the dribble
Brain, eyes, mouth
Pretty much no frisbee player I've ever met talks enough on defense.
Even just "[name], I'm here!" makes it easier for a teammate to know where help defense is
Good defense often comes down to a mental challenge—fighting the instinct to be reactive in order to be proactive. If you're just responding to what your assignment is doing, you're almost certainly playing suboptimal defense. Great defenders are constantly reading the play and deciding for themselves where they want to be positioned.
Defense is knowing other people. Their speed, their skills, their weak points, etc etc. Knowing which of your own teammates are likely to need help, even if they're too proud to say it out loud.
(As alluded to above) A core challenge of playing defense is developing the mental skill of never losing focus, while still paying attention to multiple things (your assignment, the disc, what else is happening on the field). A half-second of inattention can be all an offense needs to turn a hard possession into an easy score.
(I think of this skill as similar to meditation, where you're building up the skill of consistently focusing on the breath, without letting stray thoughts intrude)
Trying to re-summarize the most important stuff
Play like what you care about is the other team scoring goals
Play team defense! Switch, bracket, surround stacks, etc
Talk more!
Clog lanes as much as you can
Maximize the amount you're proactive instead of reactive
Constant repositioning
Defend threats, not people
You can't shut down everything4—be smart about what you are and aren't committed to denying
Don't overcommit to stopping the offense from moving backwards is, in my opinion, the simplest and best example of this.
I've probably forgotten something important so feel free to make suggestions!
and this theory happens in practice too sometimes, mostly in high-level open division games
Although maybe I'm just saying that from the perspective of someone who grew up playing basketball—and defensive back in football—so good footwork has been so deeply ingrained that I don't notice how hard it can be for others.
unless you're making a play on the disc
well, sometimes you can, but that just means you're about to win a blowout, and in that case you don't need to play elite defense