Football (American)?

Question

Ok, I've tried to gain an understanding of football, but it makes no sense to me. I know you're suppose to get a touchdown, and that's about it. Would someone mind explaining how the game works, more than just you try to score points by making touchdowns?

Answer 1

Football is a game of defending your turf and keeping your opponent away from your "end zone, " the place on your end of the field where an opponent can score points, or a "touchdown" as you are aware.

Two teams battle for positioning on the field of play, and each team, in turn when they have the ball, tries to march down the field and advance toward their opponents end zone. The otter team tries to prevent their movement. Both tams exchange turns trying to advance the ball down the field.

In the end, the team that was most successful in moving the ball into the opponents end zone, scores the most points and wins the game.

Answer 2

American Football

Answer 3

There are 3 aspects of the game. Offense, defense, and special teams. Offense is the team with the ball. Defense is the team without it. Special teams are both teams when they are in the red zone. The red zone is the area of the field 20 yards and under. The goal of the offense is ultimately to score a touchdown, but it's not so simple. In order to do so, they receive the ball on the kickoff and where they are stopped on the kickoff return, where the receiving team runs the ball back towards the opposing team and their end zone. They have 4 chances, or downs, to move the ball 10 yards down field. They can do so by passing or running. If they fail to move the ball 10 yards by 4 down then they will either go for it, where if they don't make it, they will turn the ball over to the other team at that spot or they can't punt the ball downfield and give it to the other team. There are 11 players on the field for both teams. Positions are QB or quarterback, who throws or hands off the ball to another player. There are WR or wide receivers, who catch the quaterback's pass. There are HB and FB or halfbacks and fullbacks (also called running backs) who take the quarterback's handoff and run the ball downfield. Wide receivers line up wide from the offensive line. The fullback and halfback line up behind the quarterback. The offensive line is made up of 5 players who protect the quarterback while he passes or hands off the ball. The defense has a defensive line made up of 3-4 people who run at the offensive line and try to sack, or tackle the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. The line of scrimmage is where the ball is at the beginning of a play on the field. Other defensive players are linebackers who line up behind the offensive line and also try to sack the quarterbacks. There are also safeties who stand far back and try to stop the offense from scoring a touchdown when the ball gets past the defensive line and the linebackers. There are also players who provide coverage on the wide receivers who try to stop a reception (when a player on the offense catches the ball) from occuring and force the play to be incomplete (when a pass isn't caught) or intercept (when a player on the defense catches a pass thrown by the offense) the pass. If the offense is at 4 down and they do not want to risk a turnover on downs, they will try to kick the ball through the goal posts and score a field goal. The range for a field goal is about 0-50 yards. A field goal is worth 3 points. A touchdown is worth six. And then the offense gets a chance to either kick an extra point from 15 yards worth one point or go for the two point conversion where they try to get the ball into the end zone and it is of course worth 2 points. A safety is when the defense tackles the offense in their own endzone. It is worth 2 points. Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Its a very complicated game but ill try my best

The Line of Scrimmage: The game is based on the line of scrimmage. To make is simple, at the start of each play, the offensive linemen, and defensive linemen must start at the line of scrimmage. If they pass the line of scrimmage before the play starts, its called offsides or nutralzone infraction. Once the play starts, anyone can cross the line, unless your the quarterback. If you are the quarterback, you must pass the ball behind the line of scrimmage. If a quarterback does cross the line of scrimage, then he must either run with it, or pass backwards, but he can't pass it forwards. That goes with any position. Once the line of scrimmage is passed you can't pass the ball fowards. Only backwards or you run with it.

Pass Interference: This is another big part of the game. Pass interference for the defence, is if a defensive back pushes a revier so he can't catch the ball. As a defender you can't touch a reciver unless they are withiin 5 yards of the line or scrimmage. The only other time you can touch/tackle a reciver is when they touch a ball. Right when they touch the ball you can hit them. As a reciver, you can also commit pass interference. This happens when a reciver pushes a defensive player away from them before they have the pass. A reciver is not allowed to push a defender to create space, they must juke them.

Holding: Holding is when a player holds another guy so they can't sack the quarterback, or tackle a teammate. You can push anyone at anytime, as long as its not from behind, but you can not hold them.

Facemask: Facemask is when someone grabs the facemas of an oposite teams helmat. This can cause serious injury, and is penilized by a 5, or 15 yard penelty, depending on the situation.

Challanging the play: lets say the refs call a play that the coach does not agree with. The coach can challange the play. This means that the refs look at the replay. They have 1 minute to decide weather they made the right call or not. If they decide they made the wrong call, and change the outcome of the play (reversing the call) then no one loses a timeout, and it helps the team that challanged. If the refs decide they did make the right call (call stands) then the team that challanged loses a timeout. Each team gets 2 challanges a game.

Timeout: Each team has 3 timeouts. These timeouts stop the gameclock, and can be used to stop time, or give time to stratgize.

Touchdowns: The object of the game is to score touchdowns. The field is 100 yards long, 50 yards wide. The touchdowns are 50 yard wide, but only 10 yards long. A reciver must have both feet in the end zone (another word for touchdown) for it to count. In collage you only need one foot in the end zone. It gets complicated though, in certain situations, no feet can be in the end zone, as long as the ball passes the endzone, then its a touchdown. A touchdown is worth 6 points. After a touchdown is scored, a team has the option of going for 1, or 2 points. If they chose 1 point, then they get the kicker out, and they must kick an 18 yard field goal (i think its 18 yards not sure though) If they choose 2 points (going for 2 points is risky and only used in emergency situations) then the kicker does not come out, and the team gets another play from 3 yards out to score another TD.

Field Goals: Lets say a team can't get a touchdown, because they are to far away or time is running out, in that case, they can go for a feild goal. A field goal is worth 3 points. A kicker comes out, and tries to kick it between two yellow poles.

Downs: Each team gets 4 downs to get a first down. A first down is 10 yards away from the line of scrimage. Once a first down is passed, a new first down is marked 10 yards away from the line of scrimmage. The line of scrimmage is determined by where the pass was at the end of a play.

Interception: An interception happens when a quarterback throws the ball, and the other team catches it. If this happens, the team that was on offence looses the ball, and the team on defence gets possetion of the ball.

Fumble: A fumble happens what a player drops the ball before the play is over. When theres a fumble, its free for all. Whoever gets the ball first gets possesion.

Saftey: This happens VERY rarly, but its not unseen in a football game. A saftey is when a player on offense with the ball gets tackled in his own end zone. This is called a saftey, and the team that was on defence gets 2 points.

These are the basic rules of football, but theres much more, its a very complicated sport and takes time to learn. Good Luck

Answer 5

2 teams
1 field, 100yds long and 55 yds wide
1st team must reach this side of the field, 2nd team must reach the other.

You have a combined series of 4 trys called "downs". You must gain at least 10yds from the the point from where your ball is placed on the field from the first try. If you dont make 10 yards on the first try... say you make 4 yds, then your next play would be your 2nd try (down) with 6yds left. Next would be your 3rd down followed by your 4th.
Now, if you dont make that 10th yd on your 4th try, the ball will be turned over to the opposing team. Therefore you can choose not to take a chance by not getting the 10th yd on 4th down, and instead kick or "punt" the ball to the opposing team so that they will be further from their endzone to score.

Each time a team scores a touchdown (when a team reaches their endzone) they recieve 6 points followed by a a "PAT" (point after try) which equals 1 point. PAT's are when the team which just scored lines up on the 3yd line and kicks the ball off a tee through their goal-posts. After the touchdown and PAT, the team has to kick the ball back to the opposing team for their try.

Players can run with the ball until their knee or ball contacts the ground. If players do not catch a ball that is thrown, the play is ruled dead followed by the next down.

Also if a team can't reach the endzone, they can elect to kick a field-goal, where they kick the ball off a tee to try and make it through the goal-posts located behind their endzone.

Each game consists of 4 quarters 15mins long (college). Halftime seperates 1st half (1st and 2nd quarters) and 2nd half (3rd and 4th quarters). The clock continues running unless you have one of the following: Team calls a Time-Out (Each team recieves 3 per half); play results in an incomplete pass; play goes out-of-bounds; player gets injured; or touchdowns and turnovers.

Penaties make a huge difference in games and can range from 5yd to 15yd penalties. I will not go into details in the different types.

That overall is the point of the game, to outscore your opponent by gaining more points just as any sport.

Answer 6

2 team alignments - offense and defense.

Offense is the team with the ball.
Offense gets 4 trys to move the ball 10 yards.
If they can do it...they get another 4 trys.
They keep going until they make a touchdown (6 points).

If they can't seem to get close enough for a touchdown they can kick a field goal (3 points)

If they cannot get close enough to achieve 10 yards, they can elect to punt the ball on the 3rd try over to the other team so that the other team can try.

If they fail to get 10 yards - the other team gets the ball right where it is and they have 4 trys to move the ball 10 yards in the other direction.

The way you move the ball is by throwing it to someone - or running it. The offense gets to chose.

I hope that helps a little.

Answer 7

There are 11 guys on each side. These sides are called the offense and defense.

Offense tries to score those Touchdowns and fieldgoals while the defense tries to prevent them from scoring. There are rules that the players must obide like no holding, pass interference, illegal man down field. There are many more, but there's no way I'm going to list them all.

That's pretty much it. The 11 on offense try to score, the 11 on defense try to stop the offense from scoring.

Answer 8

Kind of hard to do with just words, need pictures and some interaction.

Basics:

You get 4 attempts to progress at least ten yards. If you make the ten yards or more, you get another 4 attempts, repeatedly until you score, fail, run out of time, or lose possession of the ball.

If it looks like you have real poor odds of getting the 10 yards on the 4th attempt (called downs) you kick (punt) the ball as far down the field as possible to put the other team as far as possible from it getting a scoring chance.

Take this to some nice male adult and see if they can show it to you.

Answer 9

u start by kickin off the ball and then the team has to run it
From that spot they have plays to run sometimes they run and pass. if u get to 4th down then u can kick a field goal which is 3points. The team with the most points wins.

Answer 10

when it is football season on tv, record a game, then sit down and watch it with someone who knows the game and have that person explain it too you. the reason I say to record, is so you can stop or pause to talk about it, and that way no one will be missing an important play.

gw