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The Stack
Cutting
Catching
Marking the Thrower
How To Read The Disc
Defense
...Player
...Zone
Offense
...Flow
...Player
...Zone
...Endzone
...Berkeley
Set Plays
...Standard Play
...Coffee Break
...The P Play
...The Weave
...The Looper
...Fast Break
...The Pull Play
Endzone Plays
...The Basics
...Mob
...Jailbreak
...Foreplay
...Endzone Soup
Drills
...The Basics
...3 Player Weave
...Square Drill
...Box Drill
...Breakaway
...Seattle Drill
...Second Huck
...Basic Weave
...D Score
...Swank Drill
...Go-To Drill
...Big Box

Offense - Endzone


Almost all non-long goals are scored in the ten-yard quarter circle centered at each cone, unless the defense poaches well there, so end-zone offenses usually concentrate their energies on getting into the corner. A good endzone offense should:

1. Have several options from a particular stack.

2. Be able to score either from a stoppage of play or from flow.

3. Know which player is going to score.

4. Be able to counter a defensive move.

The offense should have some basic strategies as well as some specific plays. When you're designing for your team, you should determine your basic strategies. Do you have a lot of fast guys who can beat their man to the cone? Do you have lots of handlers who work the give and go well? Are you an experienced team that works the timing play well? Pick a strategy that fits your team.

The real key is being organized. If your endzone offense is simply saying that John will have the first option on every cut in the endzone, you're ahead of the game. You can also specify by position. You could label your deeps "primary" and "secondary", and allow the primary deep to have first cut and secondary second, or you could say primary gets first cut on forehand side and secondary on backhand side. Another way to specify the goal scorer is to call him out during play. Depending on how well the other team knows you, you can call his name, his girlfriend's name(s), his dog, his company, his hometown, his nickname, his phone number, etc. Anyway, the responsibility can rotate around from point to point or even within a point, but if the cutter knows it's his cut, that's good. End zone failure usually results from no cuts or too many cuts, not from great defense.

Basic plays

Most end zone plays can be categorized as either "isolation" or as "two-pass" plays.

Isolation

The simplest isolation play is just to call a player and give that player 7 seconds or so to get open in the end zone, then have a designated dump if it's not open. If the receiver is close enough to the thrower and he's being face-guarded (the defender's back is to the thrower) and no poachers are very near by, the thrower can simply make eye contact with the receiver and then throw it in any direction, and the defender will be able to do nothing. This also works well with high stall count dumps. Do this as a drill in practice, either as an end zone play or as a play to avoid high stall count throwaways. It works, even if the receiver is not being face-guarded. The goal throw doesn't have to be this particular throw, by the way, it's just an option.

The next easiest isolation play is to have a specific cutter come out of the stack to one side or the other. This should be in your playbook. As I said before, though, it can be the nth guy in the stack, the primary deep, or whoever the thrower calls, but have some way of specifying. As defenses pick up on this play, have alternatives ready.

One way is to have the whole stack cut at the same time, then have one guy come out and cut the other way. Another way is to have a decoy cutter go first, then the real cutter cut in his wake. A third option is for the first 2-4 guys cut hard to either sideline from the stack, then the next player comes straight up the middle. A warning on this one: if the thrower has a habit of bulleting his forehands, this pass will be dropped an awful lot, and it won't be the receiver's fault. A lot of players will disagree with me on this, but it is the THROWER'S RESPONSIBILITY to make an easily catchable throw.

Two-pass plays

The disc is on the sideline. First player in the stack fakes up the line, then cuts to the middle for the dump. As he catches it, the last guy in the stack breaks for the far front cone for the continuation. Almost all two-pass plays are some variation on this (second guy in the stack comes out, second pass goes back to the original sideline, a decoy cut to the cone clears open the area ten yards inside the cone, etc.). This is really just your basic offense. Middles and deeps time their cuts so that the handlers can catch a pass, turn, and throw. Again, specify the cutter, and be able to have options on which guys cut and to which sides. For example, you could give the first cutter the option of continuing up the line into the end zone and the second man in the stack would come back for the dump/swing to the continuation. The other two-pass play is the give-and-go (A throws to B, who throws back to A). Make sure everyone else knows it, though, and clears out for A, because B's pass will often be a leading pass that floats.

Discussion

Most of what I've mentioned has been for stoppages of play, but the same principles apply for during the flow. Realize that you're near the end zone (call "ENDZONE", if that's what it takes), take a dump pass perhaps to reset, and then go. That's what happens a lot of times, anyway. The games I play in seem to have a lot of picks, fouls, etc., near the goal line, so we have more opportunities to run set plays, but our basic strategies apply even if nothing is called.

Conclusions

Have a plan. Make sure it includes basic ideas as well as specific plays. DON'T GET TOO COMPLICATED.

Have some way to call those plays (e.g., saying any word that starts with 'A' means you're running end zone play A (whatever that is).

Keep it simple, with only a few basic plays and some variations on them as defenses catch up. Be ready to adjust. Find out what works for you, and make that your basic strategy.

References

Jim Parinella http://www.upa.org/upa/totw/endzone.html