Switching: Playing better help defence by Brummie

On the face of it, playing help defence is a no-brainer; poaching to reduce the size available to an offence and switching to reduce the amount of running defenders need to do. However, I think it is easy to assume that such schemes will be perfectly executed, and that offences are too dumb to work out how to beat them. When drawn out on a whiteboard, switching and poaching improve the way that defences cover space, but executing the theory is another matter entirely.

Broadly speaking, some of the challenges in executing help defence are:

• Identification: is this threat worth switching or poaching on? Will the player best positioned to help spot the threat in time?
• Coordination: they rely on players to flawlessly assess situations in real-time and either one player takes ownership of the situation and calls for a switch, or two or more players reach the same conclusion at the same time. If the two players act differently, an offensive threat can be left wide open.
• Miscommunication: a simple misunderstanding can leave a threat unguarded.
• Spacing & Timing: a defender can only help if they are in the right place at the right time. At the moment that players switch, they often leave one or more offensive players open. A switch or poach that comes too late is at best pointless, and at worst can gift your opponent an easy goal
• Recovery: following a poach or switch, how effectively the players can get back into optimal defensive positions? If you stop one cut through help defence, but leave other players wide open instead, is that really helping?

The lines are blurred between these, and some examples touch on multiple aspects. I’m going to aim to show examples of all except recovery, which is more subjective to judge.

Offences are getting better at identifying how to take advantage of these situations, and while help defence is more prevalent than ever, I was amazed at how frequently teams missed opportunities to help each other, or failed to execute help defence well. Bear in mind that these are some of the top teams in the world, so if they still have flaws in their help defence, it’s probably a safe assumption that this applies to many teams out there.

To ensure that the examples are clear, I’ve only picked out clips of teams hucking, rather than looking at handler movements, lane poaches or similar, which can often be very quick. It is also impossible for me to know what the defensive strategy is for any of these examples, so while I might interpret something as a missed handler switch, there might be a good reason such as keeping a specific match up; I doubt this is the case with hucking. The fact that I was able to find so many examples just goes to prove that help schemes still need a lot of work.

A quick note: you’ll need to watch each example several times, working backwards from the player catching the deep throw so you can identify how they got open and where the defence went wrong in each case.

Identification

Help defences usually rely on identifying threats and preventing them by bracketing; a cutter gets open in one direction but another defender closer to the space being attacked spots the danger is able to get there first, or a defender who is being beaten calls for help from a better positioned team mate. If neither defender identifies the threat, then there’s a missed opporunity to help each other:

Kami Groom is just about level with the disc at the start of this clip and she starts gesturing for the deep shot as the disc swing. She runs past two defenders who seem unaware of her presence; her defender failed to identify the threat in time, and/or failed to communicate it to her team mates

Sockeye cutter offloads the disc then cuts deep past several Ring defenders, none of whom react to his cut.

There's no situation more ideal for help defence than immediately after a pull. Pull plays are still prevalent and this two pass move gets Machine to the goal line. One simple jab step gets Nate Goff the separation he needs, and he's able to run past two deeper defenders who notice the threat but fail to act in time. Bravo could have done a much better job at identifying the isolated cutter cutting deep.

Read more: Pull Plays

Coordination

Acting alone is probably the easiest mistake to make; a defender decides to poach under without any consideration for getting help with the deep threat, and he is suitably punished

This example from the men's semi final has a Revolver player starting his deep cut from just in front of the disc, running past four other defenders and catching a huck. We can see Freechild gesture the deep threat, but none of his team mates reacted in time.

Carolyn Finney starts this clip with the disc, offloads then goes deep. Her defender doesn't follow her initally, hoping someone else would help her.

A frequent error with switch schemes is to incorrectly assume that a team mate is on the same page as you. A Fury handler runs up line then turns deep and catches a wide open goal. Her defender looked deep as she reached the sideline, saw a deeper defender, and assumed it was safe for her to poach because she had help deep - but her team mate was not on the same page. In a match defence, dropping your focus for a few seconds like this can be impossible to recover from, and the same applies in a help scheme if it isn't implemented well.

Another opportunistic poach goes wrong; a Hybrid handler, Dalton Smith, is clearing from the handler space when his defender spots an opportunity to poach. He fails to get the disc, but also fails to communicate the switch, leaving Smith wide open and his team mate unable to recover in time.

One of the most frequent miscommunication errors with beginners is failing to pick up the correct match following the pull. With help defences, similar things can happen, particularly if one player is told to guard a specific area of the field which is then occupied by multiple cutters. In this clip, the Brute Squad deep defender reacts far too late to prevent an easy goal, but as the goal is being caught we can see another Fury cutter on the far side of the field. Two cutters, one defender; this is a coordination issue.

Miscommunication

To be effective at playing help defence, players need to react instinctively to requests from team mates; hesitation simply leaves players unguarded, as in this example where Sockeye's deepest defender only half covers the deep cut. The slow reaction is all the gap the offence needs.

Sometimes players can make a right mess of things but still recover; Machine's #16 gets left for dust, tries to switch far too late, but manages to recover to get a block on a hanging disc.

Timing

Assuming that a team mate can cover you is a dangerous thought process; by the time this switch is executed, the cutter is already free

A Ring of Fire player offloads the disc then runs directly to the end zone. The deepest Sockeye defender notices him and peels off to help, but is too late.

Late in the women's final, Fury are moving the disc between handlers when suddenly a huck goes up to a completely unguarded cutter. What happened? The player who catches the goal starts at the top left of the screen, her defender is watching the disc and closer to the middle of the pitch, confident in the fact that she is not a threat with the disc on the opposite sideline. As the disc moves laterally, suddenly this threat becomes real and she looks to switch with a team mate, but the team mate has followed a cut in and the switch is too late.

At the start of this clip, Marques Brownlee is cutting underneath on the left side of the screen, then he turns and cuts diagonally to the front right cone, leaving his defender for dust. By the time the defender signals the switch, it has already happened, and it's all far too late to stop the goal.

A few inches can make all the difference, as in this example where Fury's deepest defender correctly identifies the deep cut and switches, but doesn't initially commit fully, allowing the cutter's momentum to take her past the help defence and catch an easy goal.

Conclusions

In many of these examples, the player catching the huck is left wide open. Is your help defence really helping you to win games if you give up some very easy goals because the help never materialised? Offensively, the lesson is clear: keep probing defences for weaknesses. Just because a defender is in position to switch doesn’t mean they will identify the threat in time.

Part of the reason for seeing so many examples is that offences are adapting to beat help schemes, but I think even the top teams can make drastic improvements to their help defence. Just in case you thought these examples were unusual, here are five examples where handlers go deep, running past multiple defenders in the process, many of whom could have switched. And these are just from elimination games that were streamed:

Sam McGuckin of Machine dumps the disc then heads straight for the end zone; his defender doesn't call for help, and the help defence that comes is too late.

Joseph Anderson starts this clip behind the disc, runs past everyone and scores.

Valeria Cardenas runs past five Bent defenders to catch a goal.

As Adam Rees runs downfield, a Rhino defender looks straight at him but fails to intervene.

Matt Rehder starts this clip clearing out, takes a half-step laterally to seal the lane then accelerates past two poaches for an easy goal.

Read more: Sealing the Lane

I have no idea why neither of the poaches picked Rehder up in that final clip, one of them even runs back to try to set a mark. If Revolver have room to improve their help defence, I’m sure the rest of us do too.

Part 2 in this series: Using game context to play better deep defence
Part 3 in this series: Four mistakes to avoid when defending deep cuts