Zone, part 1

This is the classic upwind/downwind Zone Defense. A “3-man-cup zone”. You play this, obviously, when the wind is blowing AGAINST the offense, and oriented so it’s blowing along the long axis of the field; i.e., when the wind makes it harder for the offense to move the disc in the direction of the end-zone they want to score in.

We say that you’re going "UPWIND” when you are fighting the wind in your attacking direction. We say that you’re going “DOWNWIND” when the wind is behind you, pushing the disc toward the direction of your attack.

When the offense has to go UPWIND, defense has an advantage. It means that deep throws are hard. And, even if someone on the offense can make the deep throw, the speed of that throw, by the time it reaches its target, will be substantially slower. This gives the defense much more time to react.

And, because defense only has to knock it down to get the turn, whereas the offense has to catch to disc, in a 50-50 jump-ball situation, the defense has the easier job. They just have to disrupt the throw to cause a drop.

So, with this assumption, you don’t have to have as many people playing defense deep. Those extra people can just “come in”; i.e., get closer to the disc. Where? To clog lanes. What does this typically look like? This:

Orange dot (on the goal-line) is attacking upward. And the wind is blowing from the top to the bottom of the image). So, Orange is Offense, and is going UPWIND.

The white circle around the orange dot is the 3-meter circle. No one except the mark can be inside of it. If you are, that’s a double-team, and against the rules.

So, for our first lesson, let’s see how offenses often set up for a zone:

And talk about one of the classic “solutions”; i.e., “cut like pistons, one in and one out”:

This is nonsense.

Only one of those cuts is doing anything, and that’s the one attacking the cup:

What’s the other one attacking? The wind? That useless downfield cut is RUNNING INTO DEFENDED SPACE, (not to mention toward the defender back there), but threatening nothing since the wind is already preventing the throw.

That cut is so bad, it didn’t even need to happen. It’s basically like someone suddenly fell into the shadow realm, and now you’re down a man:

And, what’s your plan here, after having made that attack, with someone who’s just flipped off to Narnia?

You end up with this position:

So, what’s the threat now? Well, the same peddlers of the “piston” nonsense will say, well, this:

And, you’ve got 4 defenders around the disc. So, no way to throw THROUGH the cup. In order for this cut to threaten anything, offense would have to throw OVER the cup.

And, there we have it. Nonsense.

If the entire point of Zone D is: “The wind prevents big upwind throws because, well, the wind is blowing,” then the same fking logic should apply to throwing janky hammers through the zone as well. If I saw a team do this, I’d just keep letting them do it.