Revolver's ability to push the pace while being unafraid to throw to tight windows has them sitting at the top of the men's division heading into Nationals
October 8, 2025 by Sion "Brummie" Scone in Analysis
Sion “Brummie” Scone of Flik ultimate provides his expert analysis. This content is available for free courtesy of Flik; all opinions are those of the author(s).
This year’s US Open and Pro Championships featured a world-class list of teams in the men’s division and was won by San Francisco Revolver, who haven’t won Nationals since 2017. Once famous for their dominating side stack offense and athletic defense, they’ve had a few difficult years but are back with a bang, namely a rejuvenated offense driven by some rising stars. A 21-1 record through Regionals and multiple TCT wins puts them top of Ultiworld’s power rankings and makes Revolver one of the favorites to win this year’s club championships.
The fact they were able to top their division at US Open shows San Francisco is clearly a title contender, but the parity at the tournament was remarkable. At US Open, Revolver lost in pool play to Truck Stop 15-13, but later defeated them in the final. Leading up to the championship, Revolver won 15-13 over Clapham, 15-14 in quarters against PoNY, and 15-13 in semis versus DiG. Revolver had close games with DiG and Truck Stop again at Pro Championships. Clearly, the margins at the top of the men’s game are small, and we can expect an exciting Nationals ahead.
I decided to write about Revolver even before they won US Open based on some of the features of their offense. Structurally, Revolver’s offense looks quite vanilla; they play some horizontal stack, some vertical, some T stack, some side stack, some dominator sets. They run a few set plays from the pull and the brick, just enough to get the disc moving and to generate a few quick holds on offense.
But what really caught my eye was their handler offense, and particularly both the speed of their play and the small margins they throw to. It is here that it feels Revolver are evolving to beat help defenses, i.e. defenses which are predominantly based on person-to-person defense layered with poaching and switching. Help defenses usually look to temporarily outnumber the offense in certain areas of the field, then recover quickly before the offense can find the players left open as a result.
Pushing the Boundaries
Revolver play a great blend of traditional, proven offenses with some expansive throws that push the envelope in terms of spaces they can hit. Defenses look to deny certain areas of the field, but they can’t take away everything. What they can do though, is leave small gaps, or leave areas of the field undefended that they don’t think their opponent can hit reliably.
Pushing the envelope in terms of throwing range makes it harder for the defense as they have to cover a greater area of the field. Take this first example, where DiG’s switching and poaching completely shuts down the Revolver horizontal stack until Revolver hit a 20m+ fast blade down the sideline, a great example of how Revolver attack areas of the field that defenses just weren’t expecting:
A few points later, DiG were using a poaching system to deny scoring cuts towards the front cones, but a similarly shaped throw from Kyle Lew exploited a gap down the sideline:
I love the simplicity of this next example; an open side “dad” backhand. Jason Vallee was a menace on offense, his size and speed make him a tough matchup and his throwing skills are excellent. What I like most about it is the throw could have been caught at any of a range of places on the field, empowering the receiver to milk as much as possible from the pass and – crucially – hop it in for a goal. Most teams would have taken a short reset here, but Revolver are looking to maximize the potential of every throw.
Two loopy around forehands next. Breaking the mark is nothing new, but Adam Rees puts enough shape on the throw that Vallee can choose to take a few extra yards and catch it in the end zone. This is particularly effective because Vallee’s cut wasn’t directly to the front cone; it’s a lateral cut across the face of the disc. This helps him to seal the lane from the defender, who is unable to get anywhere near the disc:
Read more: Sealing the lane
The philosophy here seems to be more than just getting the disc to a teammate, and instead setting up a teammate with an easy continuation opportunity, or providing multiple chances to make decisions about where to catch the disc. Not to mention putting the disc into the end zone as soon as it’s safe to do so.
Playing in Tight Spaces
Revolver are also clearly comfortable playing in a noisy environment; Rhino do a great job here of crowding throwing lanes, but it doesn’t slow down Revolver’s offense, who seem quite comfortable hitting the open players. Unfazed by the poaching defenders narrowing the lanes, Revolver were comfortable hitting targets in crowded spaces:
Look at this quick scoring throw through a crowded space. Sure, the receiver is wide open, but this throw required as much skill to execute as it required quick decision making:
Here, Revolver carve through DiG’s poach set in three passes:
The throw before the assist – from #4 Walter Frankenberg to #43 Nathan Prior – isn’t one hit by most offenses; at the point of release there’s a defender exactly where the receiver catches the disc! For this to work requires that defender to move out of the way. Yet it does work, and we see another assist down a narrow sideline channel:
Revolver seem to be doing a great job of recognizing when a defender can or cannot make a play on the disc, and seem quite comfortable throwing towards defenders’ backs.
Speed of Play
Pushing the envelope in terms of speed of play makes it harder for the defense, who have less time to react and reposition. Imagine that an offense had to freeze and hold the disc for five seconds after each catch; it would give the defense an opportunity to get into the optimal positions to prevent the next pass based on the field position of the disc and the other players.1 The more time defenders have to re-position, the easier it is.
Now imagine that the disc never reaches stall three; how much harder is it going to be to get into a good position to play defense? Now imagine an offense is able to move the disc on stall 0; repositioning to an optimal position is going to be virtually impossible, and it’s going to feel like you’re chasing shadows.
Here’s a wonderful fast break where Revolver start with a numerical advantage and manage to maintain it all the way down the field, moving the disc quicker than the PoNY defenders can recover. Adam Rees, the player who catches the goal, is largely responsible for the goal, stretching the field, dragging away a defender and leaving the remaining teammates to play 3 on 1. The speed of Revolver’s offense is something to behold; note the final “noisy” assist zipped between two defenders:
It’s a similar story here with this short huck:
Read more: Fast break principles
Rhino’s defense isn’t necessarily that bad here, but some of the players are too slow to react and most are just slightly too far away from the player they’re guarding; the simple act of stopping and sitting in the undefended channel allowed #2 Robin Vickers Batzdorf to get enough separation for #11 Dexter Clyburn to get the disc off the line. Once in motion, there’s no stopping Revolver, who score in just three passes. Note the final throw: again, Revolver are able to milk a little more, Nathan Kwon backpedaling to maximize the gain and hops the disc in for a goal:
A trademark Kwon move, clearly:
Revolver’s speed of release makes their give-and-go game hard to stop. The second and third moves in this sequence show an ability to begin cutting before releasing the disc, but crucially without traveling. This shows a fantastic development of skill and a nightmare to guard. The skill required to play at this speed should not be underestimated; the throwers are balanced and capable of perfectly weighting throws while working at a high tempo, with the stall never going higher than two:
Having the quickness to get open in such small spaces makes it tough to defend, especially when the players involved are both tall and fast with a range of release points who are just as happy going deep as handling. Only a pre-emptive defensive layout on the goal line prevented a similar sequence from resulting in a quick goal here:
Bringing it All Together
Let’s examine a few examples which bring together multiple concepts.
Take a look at PoNY’s defensive positioning at the start of this clip. They look pretty tight, with a few players taking a step off here and there, probably with the intention of being able to help out a teammate (see help defense). But those small gaps between them and the Revolver cutters are exactly what the Revolver offense is looking for. If you’re not close enough, they’re already open. The final throw in the sequence is another example of throwing through a tight gap right next to defenders who simply can’t react in time:
An even more stark example against Rhino, with Revolver capable of hitting small gaps the moment they appear:
This next clip has it all: an expansive opening throw, throwing to tight spaces, and unbelievable quickness.
The first cut is a simple lateral move towards the break side, but the throw isn’t to the gut; instead, it leads the receiver, Walker Frankenberg, towards the end zone where he has an immediate opportunity to throw an assist but declines. Frankenberg throws to a tiny window afforded by the fact that the person guarding the cutter is face guarding and therefore unable to react in time, gets the disc back courtesy of an offset lateral cut through the undefended channel, and a lightning fast assist follows to another player using the exact same concept but going in the opposite direction:
The next sequence has six passes between just three players, showcasing Revolver’s give-and-go offense, extensive use of dish passes,and an ability to find poached players and small gaps in defensive coverage:
I’m saving my favorite sequence until last. In their universe point win over PoNY in the US Open quarterfinal, Revolver opted to use a dominator offense using three handlers. PoNY reacted by sending a fourth defender to clog up the space in front of the disc.
We join the action as Revolver find the poached player on the far sideline; from here, it takes them five uncontested passes between four players to score in the opposite corner: three dish passes and two open side throws. The final assist is sublime from Leo Gordon, a perfectly weighted backhand towards the front corner of the end zone that allowed Raekwon Adkins to hop over the line for the win. It’s not so much the mechanics of the throw that I find impressive as the fact that Gordon was able to identify the opportunity and throw it perfectly while on the run in a fraction of a second.
While there are plenty of other title contenders in this year’s men’s division, it’s clear Revolver are evolving a unique style of play that’s fun to watch and effective at the top. It will be exciting to see how their opponents react as the Nationals begins, and how the addition of the USA World Games squad impacts their playing styles.
Side note: playing with a pause on offense is a great themed game you can use to improve your defenders’ ability to assess the field and adopt better defensive positions; see Themed Games for more ideas. ↩
