Assumptions

Try teaching someone the Pythagorean Theorem: a²+b²=c².  You’d probably tell them that in order to get the length of the hypotenuse in a right triangle, c, you can take the lengths of the legs, a and b, and plug them into the formula.  What assumptions have you made?  Did you assume they knew the difference between a hypotenuse and a leg?  That they know was a right triangle is?  That they know what a triangle is?  That they can find a square root?  Find the square of a number?  Add two numbers?

These are probably fine assumptions since we live in a society with institutionalized math education, but what if you landed on an alien planet and were trying to show the indigenous people the Pythagorean Theorem?  The assumptions you make going into that lesson could be the underlying source of a failed lesson.

Last Thursday NUT got together to watch footage and during this time it dawned on me that we had missed several things that I had just assumed we knew.

The biggest and most glaring is not letting your defender get on your back.  The frustrated version of me is screaming inside, in what world could turning your back on your man be a good thing?  How is it intuitive to just turn away from your guy?  Why isn’t it natural to keep him in front of you?  The philosopher is thinking, of course Kevin you never told them so why would they be able to figure that out?

I think that the best way to try and teach ultimate is to try and strip things down as far as possible; in essence you want to get to the most basic assumption and progress up from there.  In my mind I call these progression practices.  For example let’s say you want to teach marking, before you teach anything what’s the most basic thing your players need to know how to do?  To me it’s shuffling.  So a marking lesson should start with shuffling back and forth.  Do this with a team and you will be shocked at how many players are rounding their backs, holding their hips high, staring at the ground, carrying tension in their arms, and shuffling on their heels.  It’s astonishing how few of them are actually good at shuffling.  If you skip this step and forge on, the inability of your players to shuffle will ultimately spell your doom.

The worst and most dangerous assumption, which I think almost every Frisbee team makes, is that your players are in tune with their bodies.  To me it is obvious that most injuries are the results of poor movement patterns, but does the team know that?  Are your players aware of where they have poor ROM?  Do they know that ROM stands for Range of Motion?  Do they know that knee pain is the product of poor hip mobility or ankle mobility?  Do they know that tight hamstrings are probably an issue with your hip mobility?  Does anyone know that taking heavy, pounding, loud steps will give you shin splints and wear you down quicker?  Do they know what their stride looks like?  Are they aware of the ways their body compensate for movement deficiencies and the ways this outs them in compromising positions?

Make the assumption that they are in tune with the way they move and you just might end up with a roster that isn’t even capable of walking on the field; nothing can be worse than that.

Collapse

Taking your opponent to the shed out back and whipping them is one of the greatest feelings in ultimate.  Getting the first break of a game and following it with another gets the juices flowing of everyone on the team.  Making the other team call a timeout before they can even score and getting the break right out of half are no small tasks and when a team is able to accomplish it confidence sky rockets and your team is able to ride that through the game… usually.

Blowing a lead is an awful experience.  As a team you’ve checked all the boxes listed above but then, for reasons often difficult to understand, the wheels fall off and all that the team has built is washed away leaving only one stat that really matters, L.

The feeling of blowing a lead is one of gut wrenching helplessness.  As a young player who is scrapping for play time, watching the Frisbee players you admire and look up get beat several points in a row, a D-Liner watching the lead you built get squandered away, as a bottom guy on the O-line that got pulled so a kill line could go, as a member of the kill line that just can’t seem to punch one in, and as a coach who has no other option than putting the seven best players out there and hoping they can do the job, the feel of watching a lead get blown can only be described as helpless.

When a team is faced with defeat it has two options, lie down or play harder.  On the occasions that a team decides to bring the lightning and you’re not ready for the thunder, then you’re in prime danger of blowing the precious lead that was given to you.

The burning question is what to do when you see a run start to come?

Man this is a rough question.  I think the most difficult part is accurately diagnosing that your opponent is making a real run.  Differentiating between, “oh we just gave up two breaks we’ll get the next one”, and “these guys are coming with the fury of a thousand suns” is a much finer line than might be expected. 

There are many times when a team makes a small run and your O-Line is able to figure it out after a few reps.  If they can figure it out and work through this push from the other team, then they should become a stronger unit because of it.  The danger of pulling the panic chord early is that you can stunt this big and critical learning moment for the O-Line.

The danger of not pulling the panic chord is that not only do you lose a game but the group of seven that you need to be confident and consistent could have that very confidence and consistency threatened.  What’s to stop your O-Line from panicking every time a team makes a run in the future?

Telling the difference between a small run and a complete collapse takes a strong understanding of your team.  You need to be in touch with who they are as people, and the energy they are carrying in the moment.  Trusting the relationships you’ve built to be the indicator is your best, maybe your only, course of action.

Let’s say you’ve diagnosed that it’s time to pull the panic chord, do you put in your seven best?  Do you put in the D-Line knowing they’ve already scored a bunch in this game?  Do you go best legs or fresh legs?

I think that you have to put your best seven on the field, if you lose a game you want it to be because your best group couldn’t get the job done.  It’s easier for me to fall asleep knowing that the best guys on the team lost the game.  Let’s say you put in the D-Line in and they don’t get it, then the question sitting in your stomach will be, “man we should’ve just given the ball to our best player”.  Let’s say your best players are in and they are the ones that lose it, then it’s a lot more like “oh well no one else would have done better.”

Beyond line calling, what the team needs is a clear and strong understanding of its moneymaker.  As a team that is in the moment of giving up a lead, ask why are we good at Frisbee?  What is it that we do very well?  What is our best attribute as a team?  Who are we?

Then fall back on that, own that identity, be who you are and trust that that is the way to putting the game in the books.

Taking shots

Chicks dig the long ball, but if we’re trying to score should we take it?  Zubair thinks you should always take the huck, and he mentioned that he worked out the math behind it.

I independently took a stab at the math behind going for the long ball v. grinding away underneath.  The starting base assumptions here are that teams have a different completion rate on smaller passes than on hucks.  These numbers will be different based on the team’s personnel and the opponent you’re up against.

Chance of completing a short pass:	90%	Chance of completing a short pass:	90%
Number of Shorts to Score:	8	Number of Shorts before Huck:	4
		Chance of Completing Huck:	75%
Odds of score:	43%	Odds of score:	49%

Alright where am I getting these numbers from?  A field is 70 yards, if we manage to gain on average about 10 yards each throw then that’s something like 8 passes (factoring the pull making it to the endzone).

Matt “Goose” Pasienski said good offense takes 45 seconds to score and I think you should throw around stall 4; that yields about 12 passes to score.

Chance of completing a short pass:	90%	Chance of completing a short pass:	90%
Number of Shorts to Score:	12	Number of Shorts before Huck:	4
		Chance of Completing Huck:	75%
Odds of score:	28%	Odds of score:	49%

I think that expecting your oline to score a clean point 28% is not that crazy of an expectation.  I also think that a 90% completion rate is a rough guess; screwing up 1 in ten passes feels about right.  But, I think a far more conservative guess is we screw up 1/7.

Chance of completing a short pass:	86%	Chance of completing a short pass:	86%
Number of Shorts to Score:	12	Number of Shorts before Huck:	4
		Chance of Completing Huck:	75%
Odds of score:	16%	Odds of score:	41%

Alright at this point it is overwhelming that we should go for the huck every time we can.  75% is massively high though, I am trying to remember the best hucking percentage I can, and I am thinking Kennedy was able to complete 2 in 3 to Dane back in the hay day, certainly I’ve never been on or around a team with a better completion than 66%.

Chance of completing a short pass:	86%	Chance of completing a short pass:	86%
Number of Shorts to Score:	12	Number of Shorts before Huck:	4
		Chance of Completing Huck:	66%
Odds of score:	16%	Odds of score:	36%

Alright so this drops pretty quickly.  What if you’re NUT 2015 and your completion percentage is 20% at best?

Chance of completing a short pass:	86%	Chance of completing a short pass:	86%
Number of Shorts to Score:	12	Number of Shorts before Huck:	4
		Chance of Completing Huck:	20%
Odds of score:	16%	Odds of score:	11%

Suddenly this is looking like we should definitely not take shots.  We should probably take this out of the vacuum and consider how taking a shot can affect your next possession.  First I will need to make another big assumption.  How many passes does it take to score based on field position:

Yards away:	Passes needed to score:
70	12
60	12
50	11
40	10
30	8
20	6
10	4

This is just a decay function, where the redzone has the highest weight of passes needed to score.  To me this is intuitive since the defense has the smallest amount of space needed to score, it should take relatively more passes to cover that smaller space.

So if we take a shot and miss, then we have to get a d.  Another massive assumption here: What is our chance of getting a D at different distances from the goal?

Yards to defend:	Chance of getting a D:
70	2%
60	5%
50	10%
40	15%
30	20%
20	30%
10	45%

Again these are all very rough numbers that will depend on how good your team is.  How do I justify these numbers?  Using the inverse!  The chance we don’t get a D is just 1 minus column 2.

Yards to defend:	Chance of getting a D:	Chance they don't turn it from here:	Chance they eventually score:
60	5%	95%	22%
50	10%	90%	24%
40	15%	85%	26%
30	20%	80%	31%
20	30%	70%	39%
10	45%	55%	55%

To me these numbers feel right.  I think teams score on NUT about 22% of the time they have to go the length of the field.  I think I am overvaluing NUT’s redzone defense, but I don’t feel like measuring this at all.  Anyway, I take comfort in my estimates by seeing the chances the other team will eventually score.

Alright so if we can get a d with 60 yards to defend, then we will have 10 yards to score and only need 4 passes.  That looks like the chart below.

Yards to defend:	Passes needed to score if we get the D:
60	6
50	8
40	10
30	11
20	12
10	12

Let’s start stacking these numbers:

Yards to defend:	Chance of getting a D:	Passes needed to score if we get the D:	Chance of scoring off the D:	Total Chance of scoring:
60	5%	6	40%	2%
50	10%	8	29%	3%
40	15%	10	21%	3%
30	20%	11	18%	4%
20	30%	12	16%	5%
10	45%	12	16%	7%

Suddenly this doesn’t look so good, and it feels like we should just grind underneath and try to maintain possession and score.  I believe the boost in odds of scoring by getting better field position is offset by the odds that we don’t get that D.

The art lies in understanding that these odds are constantly changing.  The factors of the game, your personnel against the other team, put these in constant flux and having some kind of unconscious gauge over them can help you take shots that are beneficial to them team.  If your teams completions on small passes is dipping below 2/3 you should probably start launching it and hoping for the best, if your connecting anywhere over ½ of your hucks again I think you should let it fly.

This is pretty clearly a case of confirmation bias out of me.  The way I want to play ultimate is to hold onto the disc and maintain possession, I think we should pour our effort points into improving the “Chance of completing a short pass:” category.  I don’t think the value of getting field position is worth it to take a bad huck.  Ultimate in my mind is a game of possession, the team that can complete more passes has the better chance of winning.