for my pal !@#$%
 

american footbal is a complex game. It took me over a decade of watching to begin to understand most of what goes on. It really is like 5 dimensional chess.

Holding - on Offense, the offensive line cannot actually grab and tackle a defender. Their job is to hit them, get in their way, and push them away from whoever has the ball (QB or RB). If they grab a guy who is turning around to chase the ballcarrier, in order to keep him from going after the guy, that is a Offensive holding penalty. If it was not a penalty the O-line would have a very big advantage on running plays, since whoever they were facing could not give chase.


Pass Interference - This is called when a defender hits or rabs a receiver before the ball gets to the receiver. The receiver must be given a chance to make a play on the ball. a defender can go for the ball too, and that is all good, but if he just hits or grabs a receiver to keep that receiver from getting to the ball, then that is interference. If they time it just right though, and hit the guy at the moment the ball is there, that is perfect.
The line of scrimmage (the imaginary line marking where the ball is placed before each down) is important to this. There is a ten yard "cushion" (I think it is ten yards, maybe 5) from the line of scrimmage where a defender can hit the receiver. Basically, right when the ball is snapped, you can pop a receiver hard, but once he is into his route, past that "cushion" the defender has to use his athletic ability to keep up with him, instead of just hitting or grabing him.


like in basketball, thre is a clock that determines how long a team has before they snap the ball (in BBALL it determines how long they have until they have to shoot the ball). If that clock runs out there is a delay of game penalty on the offense. If there is less time on the game clock than the shot clock, then the team with the ball does not have to snap it, and can just let the clock run out.

any more questions?

I am glad no one got crippled last night. If you watch more games !#$#$ you will see that in nearkly each one someone is crippled and carted off the field. Last year I saw a Vikings guy break his femur. No one breaks the femur!! its the densest and strongest bone in the body!

ooooooooh ok! thanks man! maybe next year i'll be ready for your football pool ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!)

so pass interference is like "holding" but for the receiver? funny thing, i thought the point of the game was to hold people and keep them from doing shot. i guess there are subtleties. ha! i did see a slow motion replay of a holding where a dude was being grabbed by his shoulder pads/sleeve and i thought "what a pussy move", ha ha ha

so a question: is the shot clock cummulative? cuz first they had like 12 seconds and then there was 1 minute and they just let it go, go go... oh so did they first let it run until the last second, and then...? ? ? ?

the clock in bball is 24 seconds right? what is it in football?

btw i have in the back of my head the horrible memory of seeing a philadelphia eagles quarterback getting his shin broken like a fucking matchstick- reggie.. something. in the 90s. it still gives me the willies to think about it.

From the end of any given play to the snap of the next one, the Offense has 40 seconds in which to substitute players, call a play, relay it to the offensive players, get set, figure out who will block who and snap the ball.

every play it resets. It seems like a long time on TV, because TV time is warped a bit, but IRL or at the game it goes by very quickly. There is a lot to do. Not only what i metioned above, but players go in motion to distract or to set something up, a nd QB's "read" the defenses to see if they need to change the given play (audible to a run or to a short pass , etc.)
That is why you cannot have stupid people playing QB

I don't like seeing broken bones come rupturing through flesh. eeep.

oh! ok... that makes sense now. 40 seconds. so you can use up to 39 seconds if you're ahead on the score, or hurry the fuck up & take the ball out of bounds if you're behind. i see. it... begins to make sense, ha ha ha.

as a kid I had no idea there was so many levels to the strategy

i really is a mindfuck

between the coaches trying to second-guess each other, to the QB's treying to read what the defense formation says to him, to the Defense trying to read what the Offense formation is doing, to the individual parts, such as the O-line trying to figure out how the D-line and linebackers are going to attack
and more

it is crazy

Through all the studies done on american football players, across the board the smartest ones on the team are the Offensive Line, ( and ussually the biggest guys too. 6'1" 270lbs is undersized. Most go around 6'4" 310lbs now.)
don;t know why that is.

I was a pretty decent receiver in high school P.E. class.

Golden hands.

Ah yes, the game of football. Where men become manly and the women melt for them like so many ice cubes to a clothes iron.
I very much enjoy this sport, it is truly a ballet of leather and spandex rivaled only by shakespeare himself.

give that man a prize it's certainly is 5 yards and it's called the Chuck Rule.
As the defender has 5 yards to basically flatten the receiver before he has to let him free. Which of course they don't do as you watch more football you will notice that there is a lot of hand to hand combat between the receivers and the defenders. Pass interference can be called both ways. if the receiver throws the defender out of his way to catch the ball it is pass interference the problem is they call it on the offense as often as they call holding.

I'm not sure which has ruined football more TV or instant replays? I guess it's tv because when we have instant replays we have no action on the field and if we have no action on the field then we can have more commercials oh goody goody.

Vince Lombardi said that the moment they created the "TV timeout" (solely so the networks can show commercials) that it fucked up the game for coaches.

it was strange to really watch a game for the first time and realize that the game you watch doesn't matter, it's the rerun that matters, and you don't know what's going on until the judges pronounce their verdict. you can't trust your eyes and the whole thing is an exercise in delayed gratification (or delayed pain). very bizarre. i know in futbol we have the offside rule and controversial calls but here it's every fucking play that needs review. crazy!

on the other hand, the constant commercial breaks are great for eating, drinking, pissing, drinking some more, pissing again, without missing any action.