Friday, December 08, 2006
Forcing Confusion
Well, I'm glad I got that last post of my chest. Apologies to the sensitive types out there.
I was traveling over the holiday and I got to wondering what level of confusion/unpreditability is ideal to force an offense out of the comfort zone. Clearly, you need to do things that the O does not expect, but you cannot be so completely random that your teammates cannot anticipate what will happen in a given situation.
In order to devide a system of defense that maximizes the chance of forcing a turnover while minimizing the chance of complete failure, you must consider what paradigm an offense or offensive player is using to make sense of the game. Once you understand how a player is thinking through the game, you can discover the blind spots in their thinking. The options that they do not consider are the options that they should be forced into taking. This can take two major forms:
1. Take what the opponent considers to be "power positions" (this varies dependent on strategy by team) and attack their efficacy by only allowing those positions to occur when/where the defense knows that it is coming. The D is then prepared to take the offense's favorite option from that position away. The key is making it look like you don't know what is coming when, in fact, you have made their emphasis on one aspect of an offense your strength instead of theirs. This is Patriots-style Defense. This will force them down the decision-tree to a sub-optimal choice. If they are a good enough team, they may win anyway, but it will be more difficult.
2. Understand what their last option is and force them to do that ad nauseum. This takes a deeper understanding, because you need to understand their hierarchy of choices more fully. If they are, on counts 1-3 looking to the strong lane/deep, perhaps you should jump on the huck and poach the lane. Then as they progress to the second option (often the break lane) you should steel your mark, and be ready downfield to recover to the break side. As they then turn to the cag, the mark and the defender need to work in concert to make the completion as difficult as possible. Similarly, in a zone, if you can determine the progression, the defense can adjust as the stall count changes.
These notions are the building blocks of a defense that works to out-think the O as opposed to just trying to bludgeon them with some BDAs.
I was traveling over the holiday and I got to wondering what level of confusion/unpreditability is ideal to force an offense out of the comfort zone. Clearly, you need to do things that the O does not expect, but you cannot be so completely random that your teammates cannot anticipate what will happen in a given situation.
In order to devide a system of defense that maximizes the chance of forcing a turnover while minimizing the chance of complete failure, you must consider what paradigm an offense or offensive player is using to make sense of the game. Once you understand how a player is thinking through the game, you can discover the blind spots in their thinking. The options that they do not consider are the options that they should be forced into taking. This can take two major forms:
1. Take what the opponent considers to be "power positions" (this varies dependent on strategy by team) and attack their efficacy by only allowing those positions to occur when/where the defense knows that it is coming. The D is then prepared to take the offense's favorite option from that position away. The key is making it look like you don't know what is coming when, in fact, you have made their emphasis on one aspect of an offense your strength instead of theirs. This is Patriots-style Defense. This will force them down the decision-tree to a sub-optimal choice. If they are a good enough team, they may win anyway, but it will be more difficult.
2. Understand what their last option is and force them to do that ad nauseum. This takes a deeper understanding, because you need to understand their hierarchy of choices more fully. If they are, on counts 1-3 looking to the strong lane/deep, perhaps you should jump on the huck and poach the lane. Then as they progress to the second option (often the break lane) you should steel your mark, and be ready downfield to recover to the break side. As they then turn to the cag, the mark and the defender need to work in concert to make the completion as difficult as possible. Similarly, in a zone, if you can determine the progression, the defense can adjust as the stall count changes.
These notions are the building blocks of a defense that works to out-think the O as opposed to just trying to bludgeon them with some BDAs.
