Things Nerds Can Appreciate about Football’s Game Design
jessegalef.com
jessegalef.com
> Stadiums and Cities Matter - Even the stadium and climate in a city factor into a football team’s strategy.
The air force academy is a fair bit higher than Denver or even Colorado Springs itself (the cadet area is 7258 feet above sea level). I'd have to check but it's probably one of the highest stadium altitudes for any college.
Physical exertion at those altitudes is significantly more difficult if you're not acclimated to the altitude, ideally living up there but the first week can be tough if you aren't extremely cardio-fit. So Air Force had a built of an inbuilt home-field advantage, and when they went down to lower altitudes we had a bit of an advantage there too (living at altitude and coming back to sea level was wild, I could rock aerobic activity at sea level, you just didn't get out of breath much at all).
The crowd would heckle the away team in the gates, chanting: "the air is rare!"
Didn't stop us from sucking though, the football team was terrible.
Clearly, there's a bunch of people who want to watch Chess play.
Clemson’s rise in college football has been entirely driven by it too. About 10 years ago we hired an offensive coordinator named Chad Morris who has a math degree. Stories about the detail in his playbooks was crazy. Player acceleration, top speed, directional changes, probability, specific angles. Almost every play had 3 things developing at once on a clock in the QB’s head based largely on his field of vision.
After Morris left, Tony Elliot took over. Elliot has an engineering degree (mechanical I think).
He missed our playoff game against Ohio State this year and the offense didn’t look anything close to what it was. Covid.
There’s just so much going on with every play it’s crazy. Every detail of every player on the field matters for each play. It’s not a sport where one guy can carry your team.
We just showed up the day before early and spent the day acclimating. It was like you were on your 2nd or 3rd wind sprint instead of your first. However by that point in football season we were running 80 plays without breaks in practice (the same as a big game but shorter time). It was annoying but not a factor.
Really funny thing was, because we played in hotter shittier weather, we were actually in better shape. And the game was in the low 80s. Colorado team melted, we went strong the whole game. Also helped we smoked them.
Also did an aussie rules tourney at the AFA about 10 years back. Much more running. We all showed up a day early. Just like skiing, it's not great the first day and you're pretty good the 2nd. Third day and everyone was normal. Sure we rotated players slightly more but unless it's soccer with limited subs it doesn't really matter. Or I'm sure what they're having cadets do, aka just running around with gear on long distance.
Most sports are more ATP based (windsprints) than full cardio based, otherwise everyone would just be moving at a constant rate.
I actually dislike a lot of non-american sports because there's no chance to do anything else. The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention. I'm not paid to analyze them, so there's nothing so important about sports that I need to pay attention to them as I would for studying for an exam. Unless it's the playoffs, then sure.
If the sport is actually engaging and doesn't stop every 2 minutes then you'll find it naturally takes up all your attention.
Or this is how I choose to enjoy them.
I've done the hive mind thing as well. It's fun but I've got shit to do, relationships to build.
My attention span is also very add. Only things like coding or math can hold my attention.
I played sports highschool, college and 9 years after. Sports are great when you are a competitor. To be good they have to consume a good portion of your life. Which is fine, you are exerting direct control on the world.
As a 45 year old sitting in a pub you have no impact on a team. Nor do you by angrily posting to internet forums or yelling at talk show hosts.
Spending 1-3 days a week 3 hours at a time getting very worked up about a thing you have little control over while gathering a side of mild alcoholism isn't great. Being sulky and short with your loved ones isn't either.
After college I started watching the nfl. My team was very good senior year, mediocre the next, and a fieldgoal away from greatness. The next year they were dog shit. I noticed I was short with my mom on Sundays which was our hangout time because of nfl. She watched sports so she'd have a thing to talk to us about. I had to step back. The team was purposefully rebuilding. I found new topics to talk to my mom about.
I get a lot of home repair, gardening, and side projects done while watching baseball or football in the background.
Sports fandom is best when they enrich your like not when they consume it.
The field is a cricket oval at ~200 yards by ~150 yards (~15x the area of a US Football field). There are 18 players on the field per team, for a total of 36. The game is broken up into 20 minute quarters with ~7 min of stoppage time per quarter. With all the breaks, it's about 2.5 hours long. Though it varies by match, you basically are doing windsprints the entire time while the other team is trying to climb on you and knee you in the head. Those guys are in very good shape even for professional athletes.
Here's a good video on some Aussie Rules highlights from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUoDPEyohE
I enjoyed aussie rules as rugby seems almost as brutal as american football without the protection. Also at the time there was way more neck down contact. I saw multiple neck breaks that way 10 years of football.
Aussie had more glancing contact and seemed weirdly safer. for values of safe.
I would not play it at the level the pros do. They're brutal. Watched 2 games from the G and one from the gabba while I was in oz summer Aug 2019.
I'd like to think USAFA athletes were more fit than randos but...
Football has the action broken down in breaks. Most times you have a good idea what the next play will be (for instance, 3rd and 10, its going to be a longer pass) producing suspense.
The other sports are like watching long distance running with extra rules.
It's not at all like soccer because the number of players and size of field make trying to just keep possession and slow the game down a much more difficult thing to do (it is attempted sometimes). AFL also has 4 breaks (for the quarters), unlikes Soccers 1 for the half.
I find all three entertaining to watch, but I don't thing the "breaks" make NFL a "better" experience. :)
With football, it's a reset every down, and everyone is ready, so the strategy is critical.
But seriously, it’s even worse in person. I’ve only ever gone to one football game in person and it was almost unbearable. At least on TV you have commercials to see.
Before each play is run, the coaches decide the personnel package - which players from their team should go onto the field, based on what they predict the opposing team will do. If the offense runs out a jumbo package with a lot of larger, slower players who are good at blocking and the defense runs out a dime package - smaller, faster players to defend against a pass - the offense will likely win on a running play, but lose on a passing play. That is, if the players execute. Personnel mismatches are often exploited for big gains.
Then coaches also typically call the plays, although more experienced players will modify the play on the field based on what they see. NFL playbooks are incredibly complicated with hundreds of plays, which can each be countered with the right defensive play. Coaches are guessing what their opponent will do based on the situation, dynamically adjusting their play calls throughout the game, and setting up deceptions that build throughout - for example, one of the most common deceptions is a "play action" that is fake run passing play, which only works if the team has been consistently calling running plays. Coaches must "invest" in running possibly unsuccessful plays that set up deceptions, and then cash in at the right time. Successful trick plays are often the result of running a play multiple times earlier in the game (or even, earlier in the season!) and then modifying it for a surprise.
Great players will look for clues for what play their opponent is running, to exploit it. Some of the greatest quarterbacks - like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady - are more successful because of their ability to decode the defense before the ball is snapped, modify the play at the line of scrimmage, and know in advance which receiver is most likely to be open, than because of their athletic ability itself.
I think that "nerds" who don't follow football could appreciate the strategic game that coaches are playing just as much as the physical game the players are playing. For people who dislike football because of how it stops and starts, well - between the plays is when the coaches are playing, and it's just as exciting once you start to follow along.
I watched soccer all my life until 2020 I started watching NFL games and it felt like I needed a mini-bootcamp to learn about the game before I start appreciating it (still learning!) beyond the athletic display.
I get turned off by the stop and start aspect though, especially that they jam in the same ads over and over for 2+ hours, so I guess it's a lot more fun to watch in the stadium or simply watch replays w/ ads stripped off.
I'm very much looking forward to watching my first Superbowl today!
Compare this to tennis, where missing an individual shot can lose you the game but each failed attempted has roughly the same impact. Football (and soccer and baseball) are more like chess where one catastrophic play can essentially end the game, no matter what plays preceded or follow it.
This dynamic is about the difference between focus and consistency. Games like football and chess prioritize the focus not to make a disastrous mistake at any point. Games like basketball and scrabble emphasize performing with a high level of consistency and are more forgiving of rare large errors.
Playing at 100% every game would very quickly lead to burnout and injuries, or at least that's the common wisdom. Not sure if it's accurate [1]
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/232596711772979...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjp1Zrvn8VQ
One sees every instant as an opportunity for something game-altering to happen, creating tremendous tension. The other believes that it's almost certainly not going to, and so is bored instead of tense.
This isn't quite the same as what you're pointing out, but the appraoch to focus overlaps. In soccer, constant focus is required for 90 straight minutes. In football, you have bouts of intense action, and even though most of them will result in little gain, you don't have to be constantly on edge for hours because every moment has the same potential as every other.
Neither is superior; it's just what the audience chooses to be interested in.
These days they're often hanging out on the internet like the rest of us, just on a fantasy football site or something similar.
I'm more of a fan of soccer or tennis which both manage to be very simple but are to me much more dynamic
The exception is for this are things that are very novel. I'll happily watch a video of someone mtb riding down some insane trails or someone playing a video game in a crazy way I haven't seen before. But once its no longer new its no longer interesting to me.
It's also great at teaching teamwork and good sportsmanship. If it weren't for the concussions, it would be the perfect sport for building character in school.
*Experiences will vary with the size of the school and the program there. I'm sure there are plenty of 5A schools where you have to be a superhuman to play at all, but there are plenty of schools where normal people can make the team with some effort, and not a few 1A/2A schools where anyone that can walk makes the team.
In the Australian side one of the most impressive and key players is Nic White at 84kg and 173cm. Heck, one of the best NZ players of all time, Dan Carter, is 178cm and 94kg.
There are many positions and they require vastly different physiques.
in the early 20th century it was common for a player to take the ball and drop-kick it themselves to score a field goal. this isn't really done any more (due to changed shape of the ball), now one player holds the ball upright and the kicker kicks it.
but you are still allowed to try!. in 2006 the quarterback Doug Flutie did it right before retiring, just because he could.
It's filled with the best athletes colleges can produce for that particular sport. The worst football player on any NFL team is probably better than the best football players from the college that he attended for the previous few years.
One thing people don't realize is that these athletes are running as fast as they possibly can, especially the wide receivers. That means the cornerbacks/defenders are running as fast as they can as well. When there's any sort of separation between the wide receiver and the cornerback, that is extremely dangerous. That separation can't be made up, because they're already running as fast as they can. That means separation is an opportunity to target the wide receiver. When the quarterback throws a football with a window of a few feet to a wide receiver 40 yards away, it's simply beautiful.
There is a perfect balance between offense and defense, and there are always trade offs. Both offense and defense are looking for mismatches. Thus, if you have a wide receiver that is faster than cornerback covering him, then you have a mismatch that will be taken advantage of with impunity. So instead, you need to double-cover him with a safety playing up high. But then that leaves one of their offensive players poorly covered. How do you make up for that? You blitz with an oversized number of defenders so that you give the quarterback less time to find an open man. Or, if you have a mismatch on your defensive line, and they outmatch the protection for the quarterback, then that also gives the quarterback less time to make a play.
So you can counter that by bringing your running back or tight end to provide extra blocking. But then that limits the number of targets you can have.
There's just a long list of pros and cons to this game which makes it utterly fascinating. The players live and breathe all of this stuff.
He is not even training for this.
This is impressive to me.
I’ve always wondered why rugby strategy isn’t incorporated into NFL: long lines of backwards passing is legal and would completely mess up your average NFL defence lineup. But it seems it’s considered a “weird trick play”
I take your point it’s a different game, but it also prides itself on unique playbooks. All of the things you pointed out are why a properly practiced rugby style play would not just surprise a defensive line, but they wouldn’t even have the correct types of players to combat it (i.e a heavy defensive line would be terrible)
From sideline-to-sideline, a football field is 53 feet across. To pull this off the way it's done in rugby, you'd have to do the following:
1.) Start the play 2.) Sprint to one side of the field 3.) Stop your momentum and then turn to the other side of the field. 4.) Set your feet and then throw a 35-60 yard pass (depending on how far the other player is, and how far behind they are from you)
Meanwhile, the receiver has to: 1.) Act like they're blocking or running a pass route for a moment (otherwise the defensive player responsible for the receiver will just follow the receiver to their spot for the backward reception) 2.) Sprint to the reception point 3.) Wait for a the pass to travel the 35-60 yards 4.) Catch the ball 5.) Hope all this waiting hasn't given the defense an opportunity to get in position to smack them in the mouth once they catch the ball.
It takes typically 10-15 seconds to set up this kind of play (which is an eternity in American football). And it has little chance to succeed.
The rules disadvantage a backward pass. A backward pass is a 'live' ball. So if the receiver doesn't catch the ball and the ball hits the dirt, the team that jumps on the ball gets the ball. This is opposed to a forward pass, where the play ends if the receiver drops the ball.
Also the quarterback typically isn't athletic enough to get to one side of the field quick enough to pull this off. So you usually have a wide receiver or running back -- who are quicker of foot -- do this. But then you're asking them to accurately throw the ball a long way. Which is something they're not used to. And once the quarterback gives the ball to the wide receiver or running back, the pass must be backward or it's an illegal forward pass. So you really, really have to make sure that the receiver is behind the passer. Which is easier said than done in the chaotic environment of a football play when players are 40-50 feet apart from one another.
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That being said, there is a play in American football that's similar to the rugby strategy -- it's called a screen pass. It's not quite as dramatic as throwing the ball across the entire field, but it has the same idea. You're getting the defense to run one way and then throwing the ball across the field to the place the defense just vacated.
In rugby, the only option is backwards passing, so that's what they do.
In the NFL, forward passes are a lower risk alternative to backwards passes, so backwards passes are a much less attractive option.
In the English speaking world, there are over 328 million Americans who use the term to refer to American football, 37 million Canadians who typically mean either American or Canadian football, and 25 million Aussies who use the word to refer to Australian Football. Brits are a minority of native English speakers.
But I'm not going to say English people should start calling it soccer so I don't get confused. Let everyone speak their native language; there's nothing wrong with it!
Ultimately, the word “soccer” is of English origin, broadly understood in England, and refers exclusively to association football. In any international context, the word “football” is ambiguous at best, and it’s chauvinistic for anyone to insist that the term must exclusively apply to their own country’s version of the game.
I think "soccer" is an Americanism as well.
It isn't. It was originally Oxford slang derived from "association football":
> The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined in the UK to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, in particular rugby football. The word soccer is an abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in English private schools and universities in the 1880s (sometimes using the variant spelling "socker").[1][2][3][4] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford-Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football (see Oxford -er). Clive Toye noted "they took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer."
...
> For nearly a hundred years after it was coined, soccer was an accepted and uncontroversial alternative in Britain to football, often in colloquial and juvenile contexts, but was also widely used in formal speech and in writing about the game.[6] "Soccer" was a term used by the upper class whereas the working and middle class preferred the word "football"; as the upper class lost influence in British society from the 1960s on, "football" supplanted "soccer" as the most commonly used and accepted word. There is evidence that the use of soccer is declining in Britain and is now considered there as an American English term.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football
In other words, even in England, the word "football" was originally ambiguous enough to also refer to rugby, which is why England coined the term "soccer" to distinguish the two sports. American and Canadian football are both descended from rugby football.
Because the audience of HN is not just Americans and the title of this submission gives no clue it's about the US.