Pressing, Traps and Triggers

We’ve had a great few weeks of football with the European Championship and Copa America nearly at an end, and I’ve been coaching more recently. Intensive football watching plus coaching ultimate creates a lot of crossed wires in my brain which is sometimes helpful (my style of zone offence takes its structure directly from football) and sometimes isn’t (probably everything else).

Currently the ultimate and football parts of my brain are both thinking a lot about dynamic levels of pressure on defence. Obviously defence in the two sports is worlds apart but the structure of dynamic pressure in football is something that I’m finding very helpful. So I’m writing about it here.

What is Pressing?

Pressing is a collective action where the defending team increases their intensity and their pressure on the ball in order to win it back quickly. This contrasts with the general defensive approach which is to retreat into a solid shape that makes it hard for the attacking team to progress the ball close to the goal. Pressing increases the chance to win the ball back quickly but it also leaves more space for the attacking team if they are able to find the holes in the press.

The important part for why I think about it in relation to ultimate is that pressing isn’t constant. You can’t press constantly for 45 minutes, it’s too exhausting and too high risk. It’s that dynamic element which is interesting to me - why and when do teams choose to amplify their intensity. And of course the how - a football team is out on their own for 45 minutes essentially, with little or no chance to gather together and communicate changes. This means players need to be able to read what is happening on pitch and react cohesively.

Ultimate obviously is structured very differently from football so the incentives for the defence are different. Scores are frequent and you can easily change your defensive structure for each point because you can talk about it and change the lines between point. You don’t need to react in the moment to the same extent. Unsurprisingly with that incentive structure, there isn’t much dynamism within a point in defenses in ultimate, with it normally being limited to:

• transitions from two way forces to one way forces in the redzone

• transitions from zone to match coverage

• changes in the shape of zones when the offence has the disc in certain positions (i.e. the sideline)

This is starting to change but it is slow. As it does change I think borrowing the language from a sport that already has this framework established is helpful.

Pressing Triggers

A pressing trigger is a situation on the pitch which is advantageous for the defence to increase their intensity and aggression. Some common pressing triggers in football are:

• A player receiving a backwards pass, not facing forwards on the field

• A player receiving a pass out wide, close to the touch-line

• A player who possesses significantly weaker quality in possession receiving the ball

• A player taking a bad touch, hesitating, or receiving a slow pass

Some of these triggers are purely situational i.e. a bad pass* and some can be influenced by the defending team e.g. forcing the attacking team to pass out wide.

Some of these are already implemented in ultimate of course - particularly amplifying pressure when the disc moves to the sideline, a situation which the majority of zone defences will seek to take advantage of. Similarly it’s not uncommon for teams to allow a weaker thrower to get the disc in an effort to then increase the level of pressure on that thrower.

The more dynamic, situational triggers I don’t really think I’ve seen. There’s some pretty low hanging fruit there for teams to implement - the situations that immediately come to mind are long backwards passes on resets, or layouts on resets as situations where the offence may be momentarily disconnected and there’s a window to increase the pressure on them successfully.

Some of this is intuitive to some players for sure. But successful pressing is a whole team effort and I don’t think most players have any reaction to these things happening.

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Actually while I’m writing this there’s two triggers springing to mind that do seem to be fairly universally understood:

• misfielded pulls

• offence throwing multiple passes in their own endzone

In those situations you can feel an immediate surge in the energy and intensity of the whole defence - including, maybe especially, the sideline - and that’s really what pressing looks and feels like.

Pressing Traps

A pressing trap then is a defensive setup that tries to force the attacking team into a position that creates a trigger. A football team might try and force the opponents goal kicks to go to the left back because they’re not good on the ball and more likely to take a bad touch, or make a weak pass. This is of course different to the way we use the word in ultimate - if we were to use the football terminology in ultimate would say a zone setup from the middle of the pitch that forces the disc towards the sideline is the trap - you’re offering a free pass but that offer is a trap for the offence because the defence is going to escalate the level of intensity if it’s thrown.

I don’t think we have an analogue word in ultimate for the defence inviting the offence into making a bad decision. It would be really useful. I use these setups all the time and I definitely don’t have a word to group them into a collective. If you do already have a word for this let me know in the comments or the discord.

This is also probably as much as I can say before I start giving tooo much detail to all my opponents. Look for a followup when I (a) figure out things that actually work and (b) retire successfully.

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*which of course can be planned in advance rather than being purely situational by forcing play towards someone who is bad at passing