Today at the gym, TallE and I got into a discussion on keeping stats for the upcoming season on the execution squad. I would really like to keep throw by throw stats, but TallE confidently stated "all that matters are the turns." I thought about this some more throughout the night. Sure, goals and assists are a really cool statistic, but when it comes right down to it, they are all predicated by valuing the disc and reducing turnovers. Now, granted, I'm all about low turnover games. I had originally suspected that Wes might have had the lowest touch to turnover ratio on the O line last year, but after talking to TallE, I'm now convinced that it was actually me. This makes me happy, and this year, I will strive to have the fewest turnovers - no ratio bullshit - on the execution squad. End self promotion...for now at least.
For this year on the O-Line, we have to have a slightly different attitude than we had last year - and believe me, I was as guilty of this as anyone. Our attitude has to be that any turnover is unacceptable, and there are no excuses one way or another for them. I know when I create a turnover, I sometimes make excuses for them, whether inwardly or outwardly, and henceforth, that cannot be accepted. What is important, however, is that each time there is a turnover, we must figure out why it occured immediately, and fix the problem. I know some people on the team aren't really big about talking right after they made a mistake, but we need to get past that. I try to do this each time I create a turnover. If I throw something away, I immediately try to talk to the person I threw it to in order to either tell them "sorry, that was a bad throw, it'll be better next time" or to figure out if we miscommunicated, or something of that sort. I know, especially when one of these miscommunications occurs on the dump, it is extremely helpful to immediately talk to TallE and figure out why it occured and howI can prevent it from occuring the next time. I think this is why I'm more successful dumping the disc to TallE than pretty much anyone on the team. I feel much less comfortable talking to Wes and MikeLo about miscommunications like that. They always seem less receptive to it, mostly because I perceive that they are upset at the play rather than not wanting to fix it. Either way, this emotion sometimes gets in the way of fixing problems that need to be fixed. I don't know if I'm difficult to communicate with after I've created a turnover. Coach, TallE, Wes...tell me. I truly believe that for an offensive line, the single most important skill that everyone has is communication - it's what helped us win games last year that we had no business winning, and it's what will help us win a national championship this year.
The other attitude I want to get out of our O-line is the "I have that throw, it just didn't work this time" attitude. If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that, I'd be a rich man. It's perhaps the most idiotic statement in Ultimate, and is one of my biggest pet peaves. Nobody cares if you have that throw. If it didn't work, chances are you made a bad decision for trying it. Period. Our attitude has to be that. We can't be having turnovers from "execution" errors. If the throw didn't work, then it's not game ready. So the question is - when is poor execution of a throw a decision error rather than an execution error? That's a difficult question, but allow me to try to to answer it. Say you have a sweet flick break that you know that you can complete 90% of the time. It would be a bad decision to throw that throw. Here's why: Assume it'll take you 8 passes to score each goal (which is VERY reasonable). If everyone decides to throw a throw that they know will be complete 90% of the time, you will only score 43% of the time. That is an abysmal scoring percentage. So should you throw your 90% effective flick break? Probably not. Is it a bad decision? I say yes. Now, let's bump that percentage up to 97%. If that's the case, we'll score almost 80% of the time. That's a bit more acceptable. Of course, sometimes it will take fewer passes to score and there are some passes that are higher percentage than others (for example, last year, MikeLo-->TallE off the pull was over 99%, I'd say). I will try to not throw anything this coming season that I don't believe I have a 100% chance of completing. This has been something I have always strived for, and it has caused me to always be very cognizant of turnovers and decision making. In the end, I believe that it's the reason that I have some of the fewest turnovers of anyone on the team, even with the high number of times I touch the disc.
OK, realistically, 100% completion is impossible. You are always going to take risks and make throws that are statistically lower percentage throws. That being said, however, we should strive to make our hucks as high percentage as our dumps. This will take an unbelievable amount of discipline, both in our training and skill building and in our onfield decision making of when we should and shouldn't be making the throws. Striving to be perfect, however, will really make us all cognizant of our turnovers, and in the end, will help us to score more goals and to value the disc along the way.
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6 comments:
Good post.
About that 90% flick break, I don't think you can say that in all situations it is a bad throw. You are right in that if we throw 8 90% passes we aren't going to score that often, but if the flick break creates an opportuniy for weak-side flow it could be worth it. After the 90% we could get another weakside pass at 99% that gains 20 yards. We just moved it half way up the field at 89% If we throw 4 97% pass to move the same distance, we complete them all only 88% of the time. Some risks are worth the reward.
The problem is, you never know the completion percentage of a risky throw, and you never know if the risk is worth the reward. This is the whole trick to offense.
right - that was something I left out of the argument because I figured it was going to start making it too complex and I didn't feel like getting into it. One way or another, though, striving for 100% is the only way.
So, suppose we work it down field with a bunch of 97% passes, and then we get right near the endzone. You get the disc, TallE, and could break the mark with a 90% throw into the endzone for the score. Good decision, or no? After all, it will score us a goal 9/10 times. I think it's a hard question to answer, but the important thing is that instead of spending long hard hours figuring out if it is a good decision or not, we should just simply improve our skills to make that throw higher percentage. That ought to be our goal - striving to make our throwing percentages on "risky" throws as high as they possibly can be.
As far as talking about turnovers...obviously people are frustrated when they have jsut fucked up, and so they arent as willing to talk, or probably feel like they are being attacked (sometimes b/c this is the tone people take with them)...and a simple "what happened" can be taken as "what the fuck were you thinking."
I think that your wanting to discuss mistakes would best be implemented if the O line were to have a discussion about wanting to talk about mistakes before any competetive atmosphere, and everyone starting thinking about that idea and agreed to it beforehand, so that people could talk with cooler heads when mistakes occur at tournaments. Not everyone is as close and willing to talk as you and Tallz.
Right, sean. That's the point though. People really need to be willing to talk about turnovers. On offense especially, turnovers are often created by two people not being on the same page. If that's the case, it needs to be rectified immediately. We can't wait for it to happen 5 times before we discuss it.
Being able to talk about mistakes is important. Once while playing with RUN at (I think) Boston, we had turned the disc and were on D and they called a timeout. In the huddle, Deo wanted to talk about the turnover, and someone tried to stop him. He said something like, "We're not women, we can talk about mistakes! We already know how to play defense!" that really made me realize that mistakes like that need to be talked about early while they're most cognitively accessible. We do need to set up such a discussion ahead of time, but I don't see it being a problem, and I think by now the O line is close enough that we can do it without feeling attacked. That might not have been the case until Spring Break last year.
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