Can anyone explain American football??

A sport made for advertisers? Does anything last more than a minute?
Can you just take anyone out if you feel like it?
Would it be a better game without the pads? They make the average spooky wood rider look naked…
My favourite it so far is there seems to be a bloke who’s job it is to squeeze the water bottle at them as they can’t do it themselves.

There are a lot of rules. It’s taken 5 years and plenty of time watching with wikipedia on the tablet to begin to understand it. Any particular elements. I’m sitting watching Monday night football and surfing so plenty of time….

Not a ringing endorsement…
Would be nice not to hear a whistle every time something happens but that might not be the sponsor view

It’s very much a set piece game. The nice thing is that there is a set interval between when one play stops and the next starts. So the best way to watch is record and use skip….

It’s strange but watching the rugby recently was weird the other way as they didn’t keep stopping.

You can at least admire the talent of the quarterback. A team probably has 100’s of plays. For every play he has to remember where 3 or 4 receivers are going to end up down field. Then while some very big men try their best to hit him he has to decide which receiver to throw to and place the ball where the runner will end up.

Some of them have the plays written on their arms…. Still thinking it would take a long time starved of other (real) sports to want to watch it.

Indeed. I’m in Canada so the choices are limited…. NHL or NFL or baseball.

It’s best as background and if the scoreline is tight the final few minutes are exciting.

This current match is dull even by NFL standards.

If you’re still watching the 4th quarter as usual is a bit more entertaining (but still with lots of breaks).

This might help. Or not! Funny though. Aussie live blog commentating on Aussie rules ledge Jarryd Hayne’s first game in the NFL

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/live/2015/sep/15/jarryd-hayne-san-francisco-49ers-debut-against-minnesota-vikings

06:03
Bridgewater starting to throw the hamburger, now. He gains several yards for his squadron with a pass to No44, Asiata. Then he’s sacked. And now it’s second and 16. Darryl Patterson takes a catch and is jumped upon by a huge man. There are flags. It’s an illegal substitution. There will be no illegal substituting in this referee’s National Football League, no sirree Bob Hoskins. Third down. The Vikings have 12 yards to go in a down. Something. It’s fourth and eight. What do they do? They run… and get sacked. Teddy’s collared. It’s all 49ers as Aaron Lynch gives poor Teddy nightmares. Sacked. Couldn’t tell you why it’s called that. But sacked he was, Teddy, sacked like a poor employee.

Ball thown advert ball thrown advert ball thrown advert ball ….

Great game and very complicated, I sat down with a friends dad one Saturday in Huntington Beach and watched 3 college games, he explained lots of the rules.

Got a way better understanding of it after that.

Some friends asked me about Aussie rules the other day, they had watched a game on TV and said it just looked like people fighting for the ball. Again a fantastic game to see live and see all the movement of players around the field.

As a rule I find any sport where the team are called The (place name) (ruffty tuffty animal/person)s it’s not worth watching.
Eg West Ham United Football Club would be the East London Hammers. Chelsea would be the Chelsea Lions.
It’s all sounds a bit silly.

I’ve been watching it most of my life and enjoy it. I suppose understanding what’s happening is a part of “getting” it.

It’s essentially a game of strategically trying to gain ground on your opponent through set pieces, in order to get in position to try and score. For the other team, you’re trying to prevent that from happening so you can get the ball back. The stop-start nature of it is something you get used to. Definitely benefits the advertisers and it’s a huge part of why they’re the highest paid athletes in the world.

Zippykona – I need to adopt your rule on names.

Scottish football veers close to that rule…

Would it be a better game without the pads?

Be under no mistake the pads (shoulder) and the helmet aren’t there for protection…. They are more legalised weapons.

Indeed. I’m in Canada so the choices are limited…. NHL or NFL or baseball.

What about the CFL? The Grey Cup isn’t played until November, so you still have a month or so left to watch.

As for North American Football, generally, I think you have it, mikewsmith. I do understand it, and compared to rugby, think it is the most absurd sport in the world. I mean, the padding, the fact that you have multiple lines for different types of play, so that a few of your players may come on for only a few seconds per game, the stop time… It is ridiculous.

That said, if you think about it more like live, physical chess, it becomes slightly more interesting: players dressed like ‘warriors’ moved around the field for strategic advantage…

As a rule I find any sport where the team are called The (place name) (ruffty tuffty animal/person)s it’s not worth watching.

Guessing you’re not a Rugby League fan then!

It’s probably a cultural thing to do with the way the yanks present their sport as much as anything else but american football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey leave me very cold. Baseball is the worst of the lot for me – just so little variety with such big breaks. But then again I love cricket which the uneducated could accuse of being the same. So it’s probably just a deep seated dislike of americans that I can’t get past.

Remember that most people don’t get cricket, this does not mean that it’s not worth putting the effort to understand it.

I still don’t understand American football. it would be good to watch it with someone who did.

Things became just a little clearer for me when someone explained that each team is made of 3 smaller teams..Special team “essentially lunatics who chase the kick off” Offensive team, a team when going forward to score and a Defensive team who try and stop the other team scoring…I still don’t understand it but this helped a bit.

Watching American Football is like watching a film being shot. It’s hours, days and weeks of fairly boring little stop start moments but when you edit it together into a short clip with some punchy music it looks incredible.

It’s also (until very recently at least) a sport where PEDs are completely rampant and considered de rigueur for anyone wanting to get into the big leagues.

I went to a baseball match a few years ago in Florida. I found it skewed massively in favour of the pitching team. I thought it would be massively improved by taking away the catchers gloves, because with them they rarely if ever drop the ball.

I understand this is like Americans saying that soccer goals should be made bigger.

So it’s probably just a deep seated dislike of americans that I can’t get past.

I am trying not to feel insulted for having seen NHL hockey classed as an American sport.

Yes, the television, and the current – American – league commissioner, have ‘Americanised’ the way the sport is presented to the people, but the game is most certainly NOT American.

In terms of being a sequence of set plays, it’s no different to cricket really. Not so much designed for advertising as abused by advertisers.

It doesn’t take long to get an understanding of the game (entire holidays spent playing John Madden’s on my Amiga as a kid probably helped!) You do really need to understand what’s going on to enjoy it though. The better understanding you have the more you get out of it (again a bit like cricket). Got quite into it too many years ago when it was on Channel 4 with Mick Luckhurst. The rules are not that complicated.

I remember asking a bartender in Kamloops to explain baseball to an Englishman. He didn’t even try 🙁

By comparison i used to watch NFL on channel 4 back in the day so i do understand the game. Was only 28 teams then, don’t know where Jacksonville or Baltimore came from

John, it is funny watching it now, all the teams who were rubbish, and some I’d never heard of, now seem to be winning everything. And all the teams that were dominant are now crap.

I remember asking a bartender in Kamloops to explain baseball to an Englishman. He didn’t even try

Baseball isn’t that hard to understand either. Went to see a game last time I visited friends over there. Doesn’t take long to figure out what’s going on provided you don’t go with the attitude that it’s an American sport and therefore will be silly and complicated and not worth even bothering to try and understand.

The padding thing is quite interesting. It has been said that is makes the sport a lot harder as people can give out and receive big hits. Hence the many cases of concussion causing problems later in life for players. They’re now coming round to the idea of removing some of the padding/helmets in order to stop players being able to dish out and receive such big hits.

My 14yo plays. Fully helmeted and padded up, but he’s yet to come home from a game injured. I’m sure it will come in time.

As a spectator sport (in the stadium) it actually is fairly entertaining as they have all sorts going on to make a show out of it so people don’t get fed up with all the breaks.

Televised it’s less interesting. The pundits definitely earn their money having to find inane things to talk about!

Televised it’s less interesting. The pundits definitely earn their money having to find inane things to talk about!

I used to love the C4 highlights show when I was a teenager, but a full match on TV can indeed be a real drag, particularly if you get two teams with great defence playing.

As a spectator sport (in the stadium) it actually is fairly entertaining

That’s true for most sports: they’re all generally more entertaining live.

It’s essentially a game of strategically trying to gain ground on your opponent through set pieces, in order to get in position to try and score. For the other team, you’re trying to prevent that from happening so you can get the ball back. The stop-start nature of it is something you get used to.

That’s pretty much it. It’s mixture of chess and all out physical war. I played for a few years and as a sport to take part in, it’s fantastic. Watching it is more of a social thing and the abundance of breaks can be useful for getting more drink in or relieving yourself of the stuff you drank earlier. Obviously if you have a clue as to what’s happening on the pitch then it’s more interesting to watch.

Would it be a better game without the pads?

We used to train at the local rugby ground and would sometimes get ribbed by the local players for being all padded up like puffs. When offered to give it a go, the few that accepted the challenge never came back as we’d go out of our way to show them why we wore pads. As a game it’s every bit as physical as rugby but much, much more violent. A lot of the players i played with, or against, were not from a rugby background (generally big but soft men ime) but local nutters, hardmen, bouncers, fighters, paramilitary thugs, members of the riot squad or mentally unhinged in another way. Every match was a proper all-out battle and it was great fun 😀

A lot of the players i played with, or against, were not from a rugby background (generally big but soft men ime) but local nutters, hardmen, bouncers, fighters, paramilitary thugs, members of the riot squad or mentally unhinged in another way. Every match was a proper all-out battle and it was great fun

See, that’s strange. Looking at those who took it up at a UK university it was invariably a meeting ground for the social misfits and sporting underachievers who had never been able to find a sport where they could find friends or been good enough to get picked. With all the naturally talented hand eye coordinated types sticking to the mainstream sports (this was Loughborough, so the standard in most teams was quite high) it looked like the easy option if representing your university in a team sport was your objective. Sort of like ultimate frisbee, but with physical contact.

I used to watch a lot of American Football especially when living in New York, as an aside my screen name comes from numerous trips to New Orleans to watch games.

The game is setup to create staged moments or “plays”, the stop start isn’t that different to say rugby league it’s just the teams have 2 mins to setup and change players for specific plays, eg run vs pass for the offense (attacking team). The whistle is blown to stop the clock. The accuracy and skill in the game especially passing is phenomenal.

If you watch old footage before the use of the extensive padding it was a lot more sedate but so was rugby Before the professional age. The pads and helmets create much more violent contacts and that makes for good viewing for spectators.

NFL is the pinnacle but college football is very interesting with a slightly different style, more open.

The NFL have some great policies, eg ticket prices are controlled and kept low as the clubs don’t need the money as they get sufficient from TV. The club with the worst record at the end of the year gets to pick the best college player, this helps prevent a few clubs dominating year in year out.

Started really watching when I lived in rural Canada. I then used to watch most of the games shown on Sky when I cam home, and was a launch day customer for Sky Digital many years ago because I loved it, but lost the love about 7 years ago and now no longer watch it. But I still think it’s a great game.

The good things

1) Strategy
2) Sheer athletic achievements of QBs, WRs, CBs and RBs
3) The Draft and various parity systems mean that there is less of the tedious domination of the whole leag by 3-4 teams that there is in the premiership.
4) The US comentators often very good.

social misfits and sporting underachievers who had never been able to find a sport where they could find friends or been good enough to get picked

The type of fellas who’d carry nunchucks and dress like highlander? Yup we had a few of those 😀 With so many positions to choose from, even the most uncoordinated spangle could find somewhere to play. But you need good athletes to play well and our team had many of those.

The type of fellas who’d carry nunchucks and dress like highlander?

No – I’m more thinking the kind of lad who is dressed by his mother and carries a copy of dungeons and dragons monthly under his arm. If they were skinny you would call them a typical nerd but most of these lads packed a bit of weight curtesy of the golden arches, not the gym.

definitely a game for watching highlights on TV, I played for 6 or 7 years and still don’t know all the rules…

Great game to play though! Agree with Euro on the physical element, I had to give up because my shoulders had basically stopped functioning…

My 14yo plays. Fully helmeted and padded up, but he’s yet to come home from a game injured. I’m sure it will come in time.

Firstly … far be it for me to tell you how to parent.

But my I add, with repect, a warning… keep a close eye on him, ask him how he’s feeling mid week after games or even full-on practise.

As a teenager I used to get excruciating headaches after games… as bad as the worse hangover you’ve ever had… used to get them mid week too just sitting there at work.(played from 16-19)

Realised it was the football and (sadly) didnt go back …. To be fair I played CB and loved nothing more than putting RBs on thier arse !! And having to move up to the seniors while being 10 stone wet might have had a part to play as well 😆

Funny enough just made contact via Faceache with my old team…. best times of my teenage ages, two national championships and a GB crusaders spot.

It takes a LOT of commitment and discipline to play in (or run) a successful American football team … good luck to your young man.

Best advice I’d give as a new spectator is, avoid live games. On a pre-recorded match (in the UK at least) they edit it down to remove the breaks in play, whereas on a live match they fill those gaps with mind-numbing stats and chat of the sort so beloved of blokes who wear UK football shirts to the pub despite not having kicked a ball in 20 years.

The basic premise is this. The team in possession of the ball have 4 attempts or “downs” to try and move the ball ten yards up the field. Hence, the first down will be “first and 10.” If they make say four yards, the next down is “second and 6.” Say they then lose ten yards, it’ll be third and 16. If they make the ten yards on aggregate (so 16 now in this example), they get a new set of downs and it’s first and 10 again; if they fail, possession goes to the opposition at whatever point on the field they’re at (so if they’re close to their own goal line the offence may elect to “punt” and use their fourth down to hoof it down the field as far as they can, effectively giving away possession). Possession can also be lost if they drop the ball and the defense (sic) recovers it quickly.

The offence can move the ball either by running – handing off the ball to someone else whilst still behind the line of scrimmage (the point where the ball starts), or by passing throwing it to a receiver down field. They will have a series of set plays unique to their own team which dictate what they’re going to do and where everyone needs to be. For instance, it might be a running play where two big lads on the line will try to push out sideways creating a gap for the runner to pass through, or a passing play where a receiver runs ten yards then turns in-field diagonally.

The defense will try to anticipate what the offence are going to do, and stop them doing it. If from the setup of players the Quarterback thinks the defence are on to them, he can call an audible. This is all the “blue 42” business that you hear sometimes before the ball is in motion; it’s code for “oh shit lads, we’ve been rumbled, lets do (this different play) instead.”

Scoring is primarily touchdowns and field goals. A touchdown is scored when a player is in control of the ball beyond the goal line with his feet still inbound. This is worth six points and is almost always followed by a conversion, booting it through the goal posts for an extra point. Alternatively, a team can elect to try for a field goal – kicking it through the goals without having scored a touchdown first. This is worth three points, and will typically occur on a fourth down where a team is reasonably close to the goal but think they are unlikely to score / get the necessary yardage for a first down. Following either of these scenarios, the ball is then punted back down field for the opposing team to take possession.

I’ve oversimplified a number of points, but that’s basically the gist. It looks like carnage at first glance but it’s a very, very tactical game with each side trying to second-guess / outsmart the other. Physical chess isn’t that far off the mark. Any questions? (-:

No – I’m more thinking the kind of lad who is dressed by his mother and carries a copy of dungeons and dragons monthly under his arm. If they were skinny you would call them a typical nerd but most of these lads packed a bit of weight curtesy of the golden arches, not the gym.

Sorry, never played with or against that type of person in league or international matches. They don’t sound cut out for gridiron tbh. I think you might be getting it mixed up with dodgeball?

I had to give up because my shoulders had basically stopped functioning…

Left knee for me. Playing in the Shamrock Bowl (Irish Superbowl) against the mighty Dublin Celts (who just happen to have several extremely hard US Marines from the nearby base playing for them 😯 ). It was a very close game and they’d just scored a TD in dying minutes of the 4th. They went for the 2 points instead of kicking and i managed to intercepted the pass. I ran as fast as i could (i was knackered as i played Tight End on offence and Free Safety on D – as well a kicker/punter) and was yards from scoring when i was gang tackled. One on my back and one hit my left knee from the side. It was (and still is 20+ years later) pretty sore but luckily the St. Johns Ambulance were on hand with some luke warm water 😆

Those arm pads i’m wearing are my Haro BMX elbow pads (with shin pads underneath) 😀

Why would you invent such a game when you can simply try and kick a ball from one end of a field to another?

ro5ey – Thanks. We will be continuing to keep an eye on him. He’s only just started as contact isn’t allowed until you turn 14. He’s the youngest in his team and from watching him isn’t yet getting fully stuck in despite being on par with most of the older lads size wise. As he gets fitter, faster and stronger though I think he will start to throw his weight around a bit more.

He’s playing Centre mainly at the moment and it’s only the 5 a side version.

Why would you invent such a game when you can simply try and kick a ball from one end of a field to another?

That sounds awfully simplistic, doesn’t it get boring after five minutes?

Why would you invent such a game when you can simply try and kick a ball from one end of a field to another?

Hours of entertainment…