The Cut of OUCH

As risk of reiterating what other notable ultimate bloggers have said, I'd like to talk for a moment about the so-called "Cut of Death". For future reference, the "CoD" describes a cut which begins behind or to the side of the thrower and is made up the line.

Initially, I regarded the CoD as a useful dump cut, with great potential for creating flow. When I joined my high school team as a freshman, I was taught an offense that began with a cut from the front of the stack: front man fakes to one side of the thrower and then flares out in a CoD. It was phased out after my first year, for whatever reason, and for a long time I thought that it should be brought back--we had the throwers to complete this pass successfully, and it made for some nice yardage gains. The only apparent drawbacks were the fact that the fake was not a viable cut, and so any decent defender would expect the flare and could shut it down with reasonable effort. Also, a poorly timed cut would generate a lot of clogging, something that we always struggled with. Thinking back, it would have taken a lot of effort to get it right, and nixing it was probably a good choice.

Today, I was playing a summer league game, my first in two weeks (the fields were rained out for a week, and then I was in West Virginia when the weather was peachy). I noticed that bodying the dump cutter mostly shut down the up-the-line. The dump then had to explore other options, and, since he was an experienced CHS alum, he pretty much got open at will by mixing it up. When he defended me, I set myself up lateral to the thrower, a good 15yds away, and faked as if to catch the dump pass behind the thrower. Once my defender's shoulders turned, I cut up the line--the throw goes up a little high, my left hand snags it, and then two opposing players sandwich me. My defender had barely caught up and the other man was playing the disc, sure, but they crashed into either side of me, flipped me over, and banged my shin and foot up pretty well. I called strip, thinking "clearly, the disc was mine, and they knocked the shit out of me on purpose. Easy call." The opponent who was not my defender (i.e. the six-something dude who came out of nowhere and jumped on top of me, let's call him Bubba) contested the strip. I was flabbergasted, and simply limped off the field, mumbling "I need an injury sub..."

I think we won the point anyway (but lost the game 8-15), but it gave me pause as I recalled the talk about how the CoD was taking down players and tearing their knees up. It seems that most people talked about how the stack was too close to the cutting lane, and some poaching defender got in the way. But this was different. I had cut well away from the stack, and Bubba had to leave his defender, sprint to where I was and then collide into me (thereby violating XVI.I.8.b). Technically, it was a foul, but I called strip because I had possession (I guess my mind was somewhere in the 9th edition or something). I probably would have called foul, had I not been so interested in how painful it was to be squished and flipped. What's up with dick calls and contests at summer league?

End result, I now have instant shin-splints and a tough time extended my foot. I also have some new ideas about how to run dump cuts (laterally, for instance, despite the way vets warn n00bs to not cut laterally, ever). I grant that Bubba was playing balls-out and maybe could have d'ed me cleanly, but how do you avoid being clobbered by aggressive players? It wouldn't take a CoD to take me down, I'm still learning to be physical on the field. What happened to the "responsibility of all players to avoid contact in every way possible" ?