You, too, can look off defenders
You have my permission
Looking off the defense is a skill used in any sport that involves passing—basketball, football, ultimate frisbee, etc.
If anyone's not familiar with it, here's how it works:
The defense, obviously, wants to make it hard for the offense to complete their next pass. One way they do that is by looking at the thrower's eyes to figure out where they're looking, and thus where they'll be throwing. Defenders will set their positioning based on the thrower's eyes. For example, if the thrower is looking to the right and the person I'm guarding is cutting to the left, I won't guard them very closely—they're not about to get the disc because the thrower doesn't even know where they are.
A good thrower can take advantage of that defensive tendence by seeing a potential passing option, and then intentionally looking in the wrong direction to induce the defense to move the wrong way. At the last moment, they look at and throw to the open receiver.
Here's an example from a recent AUDL game, where Jonathan Nethercutt uses his eyes to trick the deep defenders in a zone defense:
The AUDL uploaded it in a separate clip titled "No-look hammer assist from the logo for Jonathan Nethercutt", but if you watch the replay (and listen to the announcers) it's pretty clear that it's not a no-look. He is looking off the defense — looking the other direction until the last moment, when his eyes focus in on the receiver he's throwing to.
Here's a clip from a video teaching the skill to quarterbacks:
Coincidentally, the scenario is very similar to what Nethercutt does: looks to the right, before turning/looking/throwing to the left. Here's what it looks like as an animated diagram:
Here and here are a few more clips of NBA star Nikola Jokic looking off the defense. They're not quite as clear as the two examples above, but hopefully they add a little further flavor.
Two receivers splitting a deep defender in a zone isn't the only way to use the look-off in frisbee. To give one specific example, I like to look off the defense when a defender poaches off the front of the stack because they know an under cut is coming from the back of the stack. Instead of looking elsewhere, I'll sometimes keep looking for the under cut. I'll even pretend not to see the poacher. This deceives them into thinking they're playing good defense, until the moment I look to the left and immediately throw to the receiver they've left uncovered. Again, as a diagram:
Yes, you
This is a skill we should encourage more players to experiment with. Here's why.
First, it's potentially pretty useful for newer players:
Beginning to intermediate players, in my experience, suffer from a sort of vicious cycle. They don't have a full set of accurate throws to rely on, and they tend to lock in on the area/person they're interested in throwing the disc to. Good defenders know this and feel comfortable poaching against weaker throwers. It's a cycle: they lack distance/accuracy, and that changes how the defense plays, making their lack of accuracy all the more difficult to overcome.
One way out of this cycle is to have better, more varied, and more accurate throws. But there's no shortcut to being good at throwing. You have to put in the (many) hours to acquire that skill.
On the other hand, there's nothing conceptually hard about looking off the defense. First you look to the left, then you look to the right. That's it. If you can play social deception boardgames like Chameleon or Werewolf, then you're perfectly capable of using your brain to fool other people. If you practice the skill of using deception on the frisbee field, you'll be able to fool people there as well.
Second, we're only limited by our expectations:
In the Jokic video, Ben Taylor (the narrator) says that "this kind of look away is reserved for some of the best passers in the sport". But I'm not sure that's true. Sure, Jokic and Nethercutt are at the top of their respective sports. But here's a clip of one of Jokic's teammates, who's not especially known for his passing skills, successfully looking off the defense.
I think this is a skill where people rise to meet our expectations. To give a related example: in the NBA, few players could accurately shoot from long distance...until it became seen as an essential skill, and now nearly every NBA player can. Or consider the college football clip above: yes, college football players treat their sport like a full-time job. But that QB is still just some 20-year-old kid, who the author of the video didn't even bother to mention by name. When QBs are expected to be able to look off the defense, they somehow manage to become competent at it.
As a final example, I'd encourage you to watch this YouTube video of a youth football player explaining how to look off the defense, and using his own game footage as an example. If a preteen football player can look off defenders, adult ultimate frisbee players are capable of doing it, too:
If we expect this type of cleverness from our throwers, looking off the defense can become a common technique. Right now, frisbee culture doesn’t prioritize looking off the defense, so many people either don’t know about it or don’t feel comfortable trying it.
Look, point, shout
The term looking off the defense obviously implies using your eyes. But there can be more to it. In the video above, Nethercutt isn't just looking to the right, but he's also using his left hand to point that way. Pointing at someone (or pointing "where you want them to go") can help sell your deception to the defense. Yelling the name of the decoy receiver to get their attention (or saying "keep going!" or similar) is another way to convince the defense you're interested in someone who's really only a decoy.
Look off the mark
In frisbee, there's an opportunity for looking off the defense that doesn't really exist in football—you can look off the person who's marking you as you throw. This can be a pretty powerful technique because, unlike downfield defenders, the mark is often looking at you and only you. They (often) have no idea where the cutters are—the only ideas they have are what they read in your body language and expressions.
Here are a couple ways I'll look off the mark:
I keep my head and body position pointing downfield for as long as possible when I want to throw a dump throw. I'll look at the dump out of the corner of my eye, being careful not to make it too obvious. This keeps my mark from selling out to stop the dump throw, and it's much easier for me to get a throw off.
I'll pretend I'm interested in throwing downfield to the break side to keep the mark from overcommitting to stopping me from throwing a throw to the open side. Even though it is the "open side", the mark knows that's where the cuts are likely to be and where I'm likely to throw, so they'll still sometimes try to stop those throws if they see on my face that I'm totally locked in on that one area.
Final thoughts
If we practice it and encourage it from others, looking off the defense can become a much more commonplace skill.
Although it's usually thought of as only a skill for high-level passers, that doesn't have to be the case (again, little kids are doing it on the football field). I also imagine there are some people out there who have never realized looking off the defense is a possibility—so I hope this blog helps raise awareness! There's no rule that says you have to first develop pinpoint accuracy before you can start using deception as a thrower. We're all capable of being a little tricky, and we should embrace that.
Edit (2023-08-28):
Here’s another example of looking off the defender, from the recent John McDonnell highlight video (I also wrote about his handblocks here):