My summer league zone defense
An ode to the off-side wing
Here's a zone defense strategy I've had success with in summer league. As far as I know, it's an original idea, although I wouldn't be surprised if others have hit on it as well. And while I hate giving up all my secrets, I do love helping y'all play better frisbee.
Here's my summer league zone defense: we play a typical "cup" zone, with three people in the cup, a line of three defenders behind them (one middle with a wing on either side), and one deep defender. Hopefully this is all super familiar so far. Here's a diagram (black squares are defense):
But there's a twist that takes this defense to the next level: take your best, rangiest, most athletic player, and put them...on the breakside wing (i.e., the side that the cup is NOT forcing towards).
I've never been on a team where someone else suggested this strategy. But whether the rest of the team realizes what's happening or not, I always try to put myself on the off-side wing and I really think it works. Read on to find out why.
A quick note on the diagrams
Orange (circles) is on offense, trying to score at the top of the page.
Black (squares) is on defense. The cup is forcing the disc towards the right side of the screen.
The left side of the screen is thus what I call the breakside/off-side/weak side.
Dashed blue lines show the way certain players move (compared to previous diagrams). Red lines are pointing out interesting features and don't indicate any player's movement.
Now let's get on with the article:
The deep defender is not so important
Teams often put their best defenders either in the middle, or as the deep defender. I believe the deep defender is not super important. Yes, they need to be a solid defender, but you're wasting your best defender by putting them there.
In American sports culture, we often say a defensive player who has a lot of freedom to roam around is a 'free safety', referring to the American football position. For example, here's a Reddit thread where NBA star LeBron James is referred to as a free safety (and here's an article article where his teammate Anthony Davis is the free safety).
There's an instinct to say that in a frisbee zone defense, the deep defender is the free safety. They start out in the deepest spot, just like a safety does in football. However, the deep defender lacks freedom, because they are committed to stopping the deep throws. If they come too far forward, the defense will get burned for an easy goal. In football, the free safety has that "freedom" only because there's another safety providing support as a deep defender.
When a deep defender does their job well, they barely even get involved in the play. All they do is stay close enough to the offense's deep threats that no deep throws are attempted. The offense doesn't necessarily want to throw it deep, they just want to put someone deep enough force the deep defender to stay deep.
Think about who the offense uses as their deep threat. If you play in a summer league like mine, the player that the offense sends to stretch the defense deep is likely to be one of their least experienced players—they want their best players closer to the action. That makes the offense even less likely to attempt a deep throw—it's often a throw to one of the team's weaker players, with one of the defense's better defenders likely to be closing in on them fast.
This is one reason I call this a "summer league" zone. Some of the strategy in this article is valid against any type of competition, but there are a few quirks that make this strategy extra powerful in summer league.
So the deep defender spot is wasted on your team's best defender: they lack the freedom to come far forward without giving up an easy goal, so they're stuck in the deep space defending an option that the offense doesn't even want to throw to.
The off-wing is your free safety
Instead, I've found that the off-side wing has the greatest freedom of movement, which gives them a lot of power to disrupt the offense. Here are a few things I like about the off-wing position:
First, they can often see the whole field just as well as the deep defender can. Since the cup is forcing in the opposite direction, the disc will often be on the far side of the field. By turning their hips to 'face the space', they're able to see the disc in front of them, while seeing the deep defender out of the corner of one eye and the offense's off-side handler in the corner of the other eye. They can help communicate and 'direct' the defense the same way the deep defender traditionally does.
Second, there's often no wing playing offense on their side of the field. As mentioned above, the zone offense often has one 'cutter' go deep to help spread out the defense. In my experience, no team wants to tell one of their "poppers" (the two central cutters) to go deep. Everyone thinks those central cutters have an important role. So one of the two 'wing' cutters get the role of stretching the defense deep.
If the cutter on the force side goes deep, the handler on that side doesn't have a target for a continuation pass up the sideline. So many teams have their cutter from the weak side wing go deep. This leaves the off-side wing defender even more free to roam.
The final factor that makes the off-side wing defender a free safety: even giving up a pass to your 'zone' isn't that bad. The deep defender can't come forward to help because the offense's reward for completing a deep pass is too big — an easy goal. But if the off-side wing roams around and gives up a pass in their area of responsibility? While not great, it's much less dangerous. It'll be something like a cross-field hammer that gains 20 yards. And again, in summer league this pass will likely be caught by one of the offense's weaker players, who might not be able to take advantage of the opportunity. A relatively risky throw that has much less immediate reward, especially if your 'free safety' works hard to get back into position quickly.
What can you do as off-wing 'free safety'?
With all that explanation out of the way, let's talk specifics. There are a few ways I make an impact from the off-wing space.
First, as mentioned above, I can see the field just as well as the deep defender, and so I'm often giving verbal support to the middle defender (and sometimes even to the cup defenders and the other wing).
Second, when the offense doesn't have any viable threats in the off-wing space, you can move way in towards the middle defender to help them cover the two central cutters. This makes the whole field way more cramped for the offense, as the middle defender can shade over towards the opposite-side wing, making it hard for the offense to find any options downfield.
Because the off-wing can provide this support, there's less need for the middle defender to be a do-it-all star.
Third, the off-wing plays a critical role stopping the offense after they break around the cup. I think this is an underrated factor in summer league defensive strategy. Often some of the easiest 'flow' for the offense comes when the cup is broken and the offense can give-and-go against a poor weak-side defender who doesn't have enough help from teammates.
With your best defender on the off-wing, they can use their speed and length to discourage any downfield throws after the cup is broken. Often, they'll even be able to stop the central handler from even passing to the weak side handler, because again, there's no wing behind them! They can cheat up and stop the pass to the handler in front of them.
In a typical summer league zone D, the offense is rewarded with flow once they break the cup. But in this system, they break the cup and are immediately stymied by the best defender on your team, forcing them back towards the clogged side of the field.
Fourth, and finally: in the right situations, our 'free safety' can make it hard for the offense to throw simple dump passes. Imagine the disc is on the force sideline (or don't imagine—there's a diagram below). If there's no off-side offensive wing, and the central cutters aren't getting open, you can give your attention to the other two players closest to you — the center handler and the off-side handler.
In summer league the "third handler" on the off-side will often be relatively weak. A cross-field pass to them that doesn't gain any yards isn't a huge blow to the defense.
Since that cross-field pass isn't especially damaging, I will sometimes find the opportunity to play some "baiting" dump defense on the central handler, from my off-wing position. I don't guard them too tightly, but I'm close enough to close the gap if the throw is floaty. I've gotten D's on dump throws to the central handler in summer league games, while playing as a wing defender.
Playing dump defense as a wing defender is the riskiest strategy in this scheme, and requires very heads-up defense. They need to be prepared to jump back out towards the middle or towards the off-wing when players start getting open in those areas. But again—this is the best defender on your team. They should be up to the task.
Final thoughts
Putting a weaker defender on your off-wing has two big downsides:
If the disc breaks the cup, they don't have the skill to stop the offense from getting further flow and gaining big yards down the field.
They don't have the skill & confidence to roam from their position when there's no one worth guarding in their original area of responsibility.
A non-star defender will have an easier time defending an area where there's sure to be offensive players nearby—the cup, the force side wing, and the middle (though this takes a bit more skill).
In my experience (and, yes, this is intuition and not hard data), putting your team's scariest defender on the off-wing is a power-up for your zone defense. It’s the one position where they can make the most of their range, athleticism, and frisbee IQ.
Since I just posted Think about what your opponent is thinking, I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss the ways this plan might be beaten. One obvious countermeasure is to have the offense put one of their trusted cutters in the off-wing space, to discourage the defender from roaming too far. The downside here is that now one of the offense's best players is staying far away from the disc most of the time. Another option is for the offense to be more aggressive about using their best players to attack the areas defended by lesser defenders. In this defense, the offense may end up gaining yards by connecting on a series of passes down the force side, instead of by breaking the zone and flowing freely down the break side.
But, to the extent that I've called this a "summer league defense", I think it's also somewhat fair to say that there's no perfect counter. In a game with big skill disparities between players, good players are going to have a positive impact. Some players generate positive value even when the other team is trying to stop them. This scheme unleashes your best player to create that impact in a way they can't from other positions in a zone D.
Edit (2023-09-19): Although I compare this defense to a football team’s free safety, I was also inspired by Thinking Basketball’s discussion of how the Boston Celtics deploy Rob Williams on defense. I had used this defensive strategy in previous seasons before their video was released, so it wasn’t the original inspiration of my strategy—but it did help me think about it more concretely.