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Rules of American Football Explained

Last week, the NFL kicked off its 2021/2022 season. I am a mega fan, but I also recognise that a lot of people think that it is a boring game, and it is too stop start, or they just don’t know enough about it to get into it. This week on Pub Convos let’s talk about the basics of the game and certain nuances that you should know if you want to give the sport a go. The objective of the game is to score more points than the other team by either scoring touchdowns or field goals. A touchdown is when a player on the attacking team catches the ball in the endzone or runs into the endzone with the ball. The attacking team gets four tries to get the ball down the field by 10 yards each try is called a down. If they fail to push the ball downfield after 4 downs, they turn the ball over to the other team. Every time the attacking team makes 10 yards the downs refresh, this continues until the team scores or turns the ball over. A field goal is when a kicker kicks the ball through the goal posts. Now let’s look at some of the positions in this game.

Offence 

• Probably the most well-known position in American Football is the quarterback. The quarterback is like the conductor of the offense and his role is to either pass the ball to a wide receiver or hand the ball off to a running back to try and score a touchdown. 

• A wide receiver is a player who runs downfield to try and catch a pass from the quarterback to score a touchdown or move the ball downfield. A running back is a player who gets the ball from the quarterback and tries to run with the ball and score a touchdown.

• One of the most important and under looked position on the offence is the offensive lineman. These are the tackles, guards and centre shown in the image. Their job is to protect the quarterback from the defending team like how a mother hen would not let predators get to their chicks. They also block defensive players from tackling a running back who is running with the ball.

Defence

• So, who are these scary defensive players trying to get to the quarterback or running back? They are defensive lineman; their job is to fight through the protection by the offensive lineman and try to tackle the quarterback or running back when they have the ball. A successful breakthrough and tackle on the quarterback is called a sack.

• Cornerbacks and safeties are players who are quick and have the assignment of covering the wide receivers to ensure they don’t catch a pass when the ball is passed to them. Safeties tend to be the last line of defence and plays an important role as they have a good vision of the entire offence

• Line-backers are the hybrid combination of both these defensive groups. They sometime drop back to cover receivers and sometime they try to fight offensive linemen to get a sack or stop a run.

Other Rules:

• Each touchdown is worth 6 points with an extra chance to kick a field goal worth 1 point after. A field goal that does not follow a touchdown is worth 3 points

• A foul or infraction of the game is usually signalled by the umpires throwing a yellow flag on the field. There are many different infractions in the game and would take forever to cover in this issue.

• Notable players in the game are: Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Donald.

Hopefully this gives you a picture of how the game works and hopefully make you more interested in this game which requires strategy and athleticism. Fooooootballll!!!!!

Before you go...

• Check out Issue #12 of Pub Convos where we talked about football and racism ⚽ 
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This series is brought to you by Adrian Fok (@adfok15). He will be writing about fascinating stuff that will help you to have a more insightful conversation in pubs or mamaks.