Haymaker's SC top ten highlight

On Saturday of Down with the Clown Steven Cummings made a ridiculous play and landed himself on Sportscenter’s top 10:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnfRANF0qho&feature=youtu.be&t=26s

Highlight reel plays will put people in the stands but it’s the little things that will make you a good team.  Being a good team gets you paid, “drive for show, put for dough” if you will.

This is where our highlight begins.  Haymaker with the disc on the far sideline, Matt on the mark forcing flick, Jerry guarding Hanley in the middle, and Yngve on the far side handler.  Notice how Jerry is currently capable of seeing the disc.  Ideally Jerry can maintain his current positioning and end up like the below.

Instead Jerry ends up like this:

We currently have Jerry and Yngve faceguarding breakside handlers.  In this moment Haymaker is running a vert stack and has plenty of space to the forceside.  When Jerry decides to faceguard he is foregoing any chance he has of seeing the disc.  The thrower could just touch pass this up the line for Hanley and Jerry would never have a chance.

Here’s a quick diagram:

Hanley doesn’t have to beat Jerry; all he needs is a little help from his thrower.  The black line is the threshold at which Hanley has Jerry boxed out.  If the thrower can just put a touch pass into the green square before Hanley gets into the green square then Hanley will just box out Jerry and make the catch.  Again Jerry is faceguarding here and won’t be able to see the disc go up and won’t be able to make a play.  You may be able to argue that Jerry can hear an “up” call and then flail his arms around and get a D.  Sure, let’s rely on that, sounds fantastic!

It happens here.  Hanley is open, Jerry only sees Hanley, all Haymaker need’s is a cognitively functional thrower to release the disc in this frame if not before this frame.

Womp.

Fortunately Haymaker has a second handler, being guarded by Yngve.

Alright so BMU has decided to go with faceguarding again.  I have already discussed this with Yngve and his defense is that he was testing this guy’s upline running ability.

Yngve peaks here.  This is the frame that makes me believe him.  I think he understands that faceguarding is less than ideal so he sneaks a peak in order to gather more information. 

The handler steps into Yngve, compressing his defensive cushion.  This creates two problems for Yngve:

1.      He is now forced to go 100% faceguard, meaning all the thrower has to do is touch pass it right past him.

2.      He is flat footed.

The flat footed thing bites and the guy creates space up the line.

The thrower is in triple threat here; he is finally in a position where he can be actually throw what is being presented to him.

Here is the moment of release.  Yngve is beat all this requires is to be thrown out in front of both the handler and Yngve.

This throw actually goes up late, the offensive guy has to reach out awkwardly and attack the disc.  I wish the disc had been released at the below frame:

I speculate that this is the moment the thrower “sees” that his guy is open.  If he had recognized the faceguard and been able to read his guy getting initial space I think he would have “known” his guy would get open.  I think that where this disc ends up getting caught is a good spot, but that it could have been thrown earlier, to space, and softer allowing his guy to just run onto it.  Rather the thrower sees this late, jams it in there, and forces his receiver to adjust into Yngve rather than away from Yngve.

So what’s up downfield?

Everything is fine.

Back of the stack peels and now Matt West is guarding the last back.

Matt starts jogging to reposition himself as the last back defender.  That jog gives up everything and the offensive player goes hard toward the big box.  Matt can’t catch up.  He gets boxed out the whole way and Haymaker gets a nice big !