With six minutes to go in the second quarter of the Bulldogs\u2019 dismembering of GWS on Saturday afternoon, the Bulldogs had a passage of play that will live on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the score at 55-23 and the Bulldogs on a tear, Sam Darcy received a handball on centre wing. He turned and immediately hit a daisy cutter to a leading Aaron Naughton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naughton turned quickly and hit a perfectly weighted ball to Marcus Bontempelli, who was streaming toward goal through an open forward line, replacing where Naughton had started his lead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bont beat Finn Callahan to the drop of the ball, took the mark in the goal square, and kicked a goal to make it 61-23.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was poetry. But it also screamed to the competition, \u201clook how fucking good we are\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dogs are now 2-0 against two finalists from last year, including the reigning premier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was Tommy Shelby outthinking Billy Kimber to become the main power in Birmingham.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a statement of a new world order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But does it have staying power? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Or is it more like Kendall Roy turning on his dad only to fumble it away?<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n To answer that, you have to look at what\u2019s different for the Bulldogs and what\u2019s the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bevo-ball has always focused on contest, transition, and time in forward half. They are currently third in clearances, first in stoppage scoring, dominant in most transition stats, and while their time in forward half numbers are relatively low through two games, they\u2019ve scored an average of 50 front half points across their two games this season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They also still have Marcus Bontempelli, Ed Richards and the other stars.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re<\/a> still good at Bevo-ball.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of interest is what\u2019s different, starting with the forward line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, Aaron Naughton played a genuine centre half forward role. Of his 12 touches a game, about 5 of them came outside the forward 50 and the other seven were inside 50. He roamed the ground and tried to provide exit options out of defence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, Naughton\u2019s inside 50 touches are up to 7.5 a game and he\u2019s getting about half a possession less outside the forward 50. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bulldogs are playing him closer to goal and using Sam Darcy more as a centre half forward where he can use his exquisite field kicking.<\/a> It\u2019s working brilliantly as Naughton has kicked eight goals over the two games and is currently leading the competition in overall scoreboard impact, while not quelling Sam Darcy\u2019s influence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The way those two are working is footy\u2019s equivalent of the Holden and Tench two man game in Mindhunter<\/em>, using each other\u2019s strengths to extract what they want from their opponents.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other difference is the Bulldogs\u2019 deployment of Rhylee West. West has long been one of my favourite players because he\u2019s creative and strong in 1v1s but this year, the Bulldogs are using him in what looks like a new role that is proliferating across the league. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Damien Hardwick famously invented the \u201cstriker\u201d role with Dustin Martin and now Christian Petracca, It\u2019s a centre bounce player who then plays basically just in the forward half. It was usually a bullocking, strong type of player that can hold up under the physicality of playing midfield. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In keeping with a broader movement across the AFL, I think that position is changing shape and getting smaller and faster and Rhylee West is a good example. <\/p>\n\n\n\n West is not a centre bounce player, but he is occupying the liminal space between forward and midfield, often playing as the sinew that connects the two phases of the game. He\u2019s not a high possession player but he lives in dangerous areas and is highly damaging out of them, with four score involvements from his 13 disposals on Saturday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Connor Macdonald is another example, better than Rhylee West, of this Diego Maradona style #10 in the AFL.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the Dogs have always been good at attacking, they\u2019re just being good at attacking in a different way now. What\u2019s interesting is how they defended, especially against GWS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now before I get into this, I want to say up front this is that I know this is not a good defensive team and they copped 100 points in their win against Brisbane last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I also want to say that, according to the AFL\u2019s chief abuser of the long tweet for articles that no reputable publication will publish Ronny Lerner, the Dogs have beaten GWS by an average of 53 points over their last five meetings so maybe we can\u2019t take too much from beating them badly again.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n But they were<\/em> interesting in defence against GWS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing to note is that, in a game where they were massively outgunned in terms of defensive talent versus forwards, the Bulldogs completely gummed up the GWS forward line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever GWS exited defence slowly, the Bulldogs flooded deep defence won with scrappiness and desperation. They\u2019ve done this in season\u2019s past, of course, but against GWS it was pronounced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While that did limit their numbers ahead of the ball a bit, the Dogs\u2019 running power and work rate going the other way meant that their transition game was still reasonably effective. Similarly, while their front half game wasn\u2019t as dominant as it usually is because they were willing to occasionally give GWS exits, their aggression in spurts was still effective as they kicked 11.3 from the front half and they fractionally won time in forward half. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The other thing is their personnel changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n