A WAG’s guide to American Football
Is your other half obsessed with American Football whilst you don’t know your end zone from your red zone? I’m here to help…
My boyfriend and I have been together almost a year now and before we met, the only American football I’d seen was the game at the end of A Cinderella Story …
…As you can imagine, I was rather disappointed when I realised not every game ends with the quarterback running into the crowd to sweep a girl off her feet!
Never the less, it’s a good game to get into and more importantly, I feel like I won’t embarrass myself at the NFL finals in London this year.
So I’m here to share my wisdom with you.
The teams
In American Football, there are 2 teams of 11 players on the field. But typically a team will have over 40 players.
Offence and defence
One team plays offence (the team in possession of the ball) and the other will play defence (they block the offence from reaching the end of the field).
Positions – the basics
Quarterback — essentially the captain of the team. He calls the tactics or “plays” on the field.
Linebackers — The defensive team will have a few of these. They stand on the lines and block the opposition from getting the ball to the end of the field.
Offensive Linemen – These guys essentially have the same job as linebackers but for the offence.
Kicker — Kicks the ball into the goal or “uprights”.
The game
The game is divided into 4 quarters of 15 minutes, but a game can take up to 3 hours to complete (with time outs, half time, penalties, etc).
Like most other games, the winning team is the one with the most points.
Downs
A set of downs is essentially 4 “chances” for the offence to get the ball into the defence’s end of the field.
This is why the pitch is marked out in yards because with those 4 chances, the offence needs to get the ball at least 10 yards into the oppositions’ end of the field without being tackled.
Resetting downs
If they manage to do this, they’ll then get the downs reset (so they get another 4 chances) to progress another (minimum) 10 yards or more from where they got to.
If you’re watching this on TV, they make it a bit easier for you by projecting two lines on the field. One shows where the offence have progressed to and the other shows where they need to get to in the next set of downs.
If they don’t progress 10 yards
If they don’t get 10 yards by the last down, the ball is handed to the other team and they’ll become the offence.
If you’re watching on TV , you’ll see this written as something like “3rd & 9”. This would mean for example it’s their 3rd down/chance and they’ve reached 9 yards.
Scoring points
Eventually, the offence will have reached the end zone. Think of the end zone as the goal in British football. It’s the very end of the opposition’s half of the pitch.
Note — a player must be holding the ball or be in the zone and catch the ball without being tackled for it to count.
Example — After succeeding the first 10 yards, it may look something like “2nd & 15” on the score board. As they’ve already got 10, they’ll need to progress to 20 yards in the next down and so on. This example says they’ve got 15 yards in their second chance of the next down.
The ultimate aim is to progress to the opposition’s end zone (goal) and achieve a touchdown.
Scores
- Touchdown (6 points) — a touchdown is achieved when the offence pass the goal line with the ball — either by carrying it, catching it or collecting it in there.
- Field Goal (3 points) — Usually attempted on the fourth down if the kicker is close enough to kick the ball through the goal posts (known as uprights). It’s like the last chance to score a few points before the ball is handed to the other team.
- Extra point (1–2 points) — After getting a touchdown, the offence have chance to score extra points. If they kick the ball through the uprights, it’s 1 point. If they take the ball into the end zone again it’s 2 points.
- Safety (2 points) — This is earned by the defence if they manage to tackle a player from the offence in their own end zone.
And that’s it.
I’m really no expert, but this is what I’ve gathered from reading the basics around the game and watching the NFL a couple of times.
Now go and stun your other half with your new found knowledge!
