I’d say Bodyline would be a better example for cricket. Tasked with beating Australia at home Jardine, the English captain, instructed his bowlers to aim at leg stump and set fields to catch the batsmen’s mishits as they tried to parry the deliveries aimed straight at them. Oh, and there were no helmets or body padding in those days.
You can see a bit of footage here. England won the series and even the greatest batsman of all time was restricted the new style, Bradman ‘only’ averaged 56.57, his worst series averagein his career.
After the West Indies used the same tactics in England, the laws were changed to effectively prohibit this strategy, a testimony to both Bodyline’s effectiveness and it’s distastefulness.
Another issue the OP is facing is that, even at the professional level, ultimate is a pretty casual sport. Nobody’s playing it for the big money or fame; they’re playing it because it’s fun. So you would expect people to keep playing it the way they’re used to even if it isn’t optimal.
The jump shot, like the slap shot in hockey, seems so natural today that we forget that it had to be invented. But, it did. The first two generations of basketball players shot set shots, for better control, and the jump shot looked very strange when first seen.
At the upper levels, ultimate players are a lot less casual than you think.
Believe me – and I speak from good authority – if they thought this tactic would win, the top players would be all over it, traditional or not.
Eh, I knew a couple of guys who made it to the college national championship, and they were still pretty casual about it. I don’t think either of them went pro, though.
This isn’t a new strategy, but a change in the way it is employed. When Patrick Roy became coach of the Avalanche, he decided that if his team was down one goal late in the third period, he would pull the goalie. Nothing new there, but before Roy, it was done at best under two minutes, usually with around one minute left. Roy decided that it didn’t matter if the opposition scored on an empty net with three minutes left or with three seconds left, the outcome was the same. He began to pull his goalie anytime under four minutes. The extra man on the ice for so long seemed to wear out the other team and the Avalanche were very successful with this tactic.
I just watched him do this again not three minutes ago vs. Nashville. Pulled Varlamov with just under four to go, kept the puck in Nashville’s zone about 90% of the time, and scored with 45 seconds to go. Game now going to overtime.
Going from front engine to rear engine cars in Formula 1 and IndyCars in the late 1950s early 1960s. A decade later, sidepods to increase grip.
In baseball the increasing use of relief pitchers, with all sort of specialized roles. Also platooning, which became popular in 1910s and 1920s, fell out of favor, revived in 1950s but fading now with larger pitching staffs. Also the switch to 5 starters (probably Dodgers after Koufax).
It was apparently common for a pitcher like Hal Newhouser or Early Wynn to pitch a knuckleball occasionally but for the last 50 years a pitcher either throws a knuckleball 90% or 0% of the time.
My understanding is that when Bill Russell was in college, the feeling was a defender had to keep both feet on the ground (as someone pointed out, jump shots had to be invented). Russell persuaded his coach to let him jump to block shots.
Tom Landry used the spread (shotgun) formation on passing downs Lots of teams hesitated, citing fears of bad snaps. When Buffalo's Chuck Knox announced in the late 1970s he would be using the spread, Don Shula said why, Dallas wasn't in the Super Bowl. Neither was Miami, who ended up adopting it.
Wilhelm Steinitz invented positional play in chess in the late 19th Century. Although his approach eventually came to dominate tournament play, it was at first greeted with scorn and dismay by the leading players of the day who considered it cowardly and plodding. A famous quote by Adolf Anderssen:
“Steinitz is a pick-pocket, he steals a pawn and wins a game with it.”
Speaking of Roy, he (along with goalie coach Francois Allaire) is credited with introducing the “butterfly” goaltending style to the NHL, which is now the dominant strategy for goaltenders.
It’s probably had secondary effects on offensive and defensive strategies in hockey too. Goaltenders now are so much more effective at making saves that I imagine that it really changes how a team can play defence and be effective.
The shotgun is an interesting case. It was pioneered by the 1960-61 San Francisco 49ers. The Niners used it full time and had considerable success with it, but abandoned it after a single disastrous game in which they were shut out by the Chicago Bears.
For a time thereafter the shotgun fell into the category of failed innovations, as in Post#11. Then Tom Landry brought it back, not as an every-down formation but as a shortcut to get the QB viewing the field sooner on passing downs. There was skepticism at first, then it spread and became almost universal.
I HATE when teams pull their goalie. Last I read it has only a 10% success rate, where in my mind, hockey is such a crazy sport I’d think the odds were still high you could steal a last minute goal rather than it being all over with an empty netter.
Association football teams playing under the Sheffield rules developed the idea of the heading game after the abolition of the fair catch. Apparently players using their heads to hit the ball whilst it was still in the air, as opposed to catching it or waiting for it to land and then kick it, was a massive innovation at the time, and also one that caused a lot of amusement to fans that were not used to seeing it. Nowadays, under the FA rules that developed out of the Sheffield rules, heading is an integral part of the sport.
This isn’t a statistical analysis, but it is an accounting of the times he has done it. Later in the 2013-2014 season, when he started pulling the goalie early, he became much more successful. The Avalanche scored to send the game to overtime four out of 18 times. No data, but scoring full strength four out of 18 times seems unlikely. And it is a lot better than 10%. More than double that.
The data must be hard to get, because it seems a strategy ripe for analysis.
That is obviously not the case. The average NHL team scores about 2.75 goals per game, or a goal every 22 minutes or so, giving them less than a 5% chance of scoring a goal in the last minute of the game if they just continue playing even strength.
Pulling the goalie roughly doubles the likelihood of a goal. Indeed, a lot of studies have been done on the strategy and it has been shown, time and time again, that
There is absolutely a justification for pulling the goalie when behind, and the customary use of that strategy is worth about 2-3 points in the standings, per year, to the average team that they would not get if they never pulled the goalie.
If anything, the evidence suggests NHL coaches are too conservative in terms of pulling the goalie, and could realize more gains in they did it a bit more.
I would say the movement to aggressive styles of tournament poker in NLHE. The first tournament players grew up playing a tight grinding style in cash games and their tounament play reflected that. Now it has completely changed.
Incidentally, here is a documentary on the 1973 WSOP made that year by immy the Greek as a promotional film by Benny Binion.