American Football is a really fun game to watch, but can be confusing if you don’t understand how the game is played. The Super Bowl is the final game of the NFL, where the champions from the AFC (American Football Conference) and the NFC (National Football Conference) play against each other to win the championship.
A little background story: the NFC initially was a separated league from the AFC, and there were two football leagues who were kind of in bad blood, but long story short in 1966 they had an agreement to merge the NFL and AFL. The first Super Bowl was held in 1967 to determine a champion between both leagues, making this year the 58th Super Bowl. And with that being said, let’s go back to the game itself.
- Offense and defense game
The main objective of the game is to score more points than the other team, but also conquer territory. Many people compare the game with capturing the flag, but more aggressively, that’s why they need the football helmets.
There are two teams: the one who has the ball is the offensive team, and their goal is to keep possession of the ball and score. While the other team is the defense, whose goal is to stop the offense to score.
- Players and Positions
Each team must have 11 players on the field during the game, but it rotates between the offensive unit and the defense unit, so while a team is playing offense the other is playing defense and so it goes…
We have lots of positions on football, so let’s highlight a few:
Quarterback or QB (THE MAN): the head of offense, the player who calls the plays and throws the ball.
Wide receiver: catch passes from QB.
Tight End (Travis’s position): does kind of everything, can act as a receiver, ball carrier or extra blocker.
Center: the guy in the middle of the offensive line, responsible for the snap and also protects the QB.
Offensive Line: there are left tackle, left guard, center, right guard and right tackle, who are always in line at the beginning of the game, their job is to protect the QB and the ball.
Defensive Line: three or four players who have the job to attack the opponent’s offense and not let them gain yards.
And the third unit is the special team, players who perform kickoffs, punts and field goals. They enter the field a few times during the game and are the ones who actually use the foot!
- The Field
The football field is 120 yards (0.11 km) long, in a rectangular shape, and is usually made of grass or turf. Using a bit of math, we have a 10 yard (9.1 m) end zone on either end, so we subtract 20 yards (18.2 m) to end zones and in the end we have a field of play which is around 50 yards (45.7 m) wide and 100 yards (91.4 m) long. And through the field it has a mark on each 5 yards (4.5 meters).
- Downs
Every offensive team has 4 attempts, “downs”, to travel 10 yards (conquer territory, remember?). If they succeed, they receive a new set of downs to travel another 10 yards, until they reach the end zone.
If the offense doesn’t earn the 10 yards in 4 “downs”, the ball is turned over to the opposing team, and they pick up the offense.
- Time of play
The game is 1 hour long, divided in four quarters of 15 minutes each. But that does not mean that the game will last just an hour, it’s usually three because the clock frequently stops – like when the team is changing from defense to offense, for injuries and timeouts (each team has three timeouts per half).
After two quarters, the game stops for a 12-minute halftime, where the teams reorganize. This is the time when, during the Super Bowl, we watch the Halftime Show of our favorite pop stars.
- Scoring
Basically, we have four kinds of scores:
Touchdown (the famous one): a team earns a touchdown when the ball is carried or caught into the end zone. It rewards 6 points.
Post-touchdown: after a touchdown, the scoring team can try to play for an extra point, when the kicker kicks through the goalposts (the big Y), or try a two-point conversion, which is like a “mini touchdown”, the team advances with the ball through the end zone and win two points (it’s way less common).
PS: The extra points are kicked from the 15-yard line and the two-point conversion from the 2-yard line.
Field goal: when the team doesn’t have any more attempts to score a touchdown, on the fourth down they go for a field goal, where the kicker enters and tries to kick the ball through the goalposts, like an extra-point, but the distance is usually further.
Safety: it awards 2 points, but it’s very uncommon, like an own goal in soccer, if the offense team is tackled in their own end zone, the ball becomes dead, so the opposing team is awarded two points.
- Some terms
After you understand all the items above, here’s a list of a few words you might listen to during the game and their meaning.
Snap: when the center throws the ball backwards to the quarterback so he can start the play.
Tackle: when a player is knocked down by the other team’s player to stop the play.
Sack: when the defensive team tackles the quarterback. It results in loss of yards.
Fumble: when the player who has the possession of the ball drops it or loses. Any team that recovers the fumble will play offense.
Interception: when a defensive player catches the ball thrown by the quarterback, so he intercepts a pass, and then they gain possession of the ball and will play offense.
Line of scrimmage: the place on the field where both teams line up.
That’s a wrap! To understand a bit more, watch the documentary “Kelce” (Prime Video), which shows Jason Kelce’s (Center of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis’ brother) life and the last year’s Super Bowl or “Quarterback” (Netflix).
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The article below was edited by Milena Casaca.
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