Three hours, four hours, whatever. Kim should enjoy it, though.
I don’t know if this has been brought up yet, but an important thing about football is that people have been known to, from time to time, wager on the game. Yes, I know betting is illegal in most places in the US, but such is life. Terms that may come up in conversation are the “line” or “point spread”, which refers to how much one team is favored over the other, and the “over and under”, which refers to how many combined points the teams are expected to score in the game. According to my newspaper this morning, Minnesota is a one point favorite and the over and under is 41.
A one-point point spread means that the teams are seen to be pretty evenly matched. The point spread is a method to equalize the teams for betting purposes, otherwise everybody would bet on the good team and not on the bad one. For instance, when there is 10 point point spread, if you bet on the favorite then the favorite must win by more than 10 in order for you to win the bet.
The over and under in this game is 41. That means people can bet the over, meaning that they think the teams’ combined point total will be more than 41, or the under, which means that they think the combined point total will be less than 41.
Try to observe what’s going on on defense as well as offense, regardless of which team has possession. Football newbies invariably simply follow the ball and focus most of their attention on offense; more experienced fans often have a profound appreciation of defensive strategies and plays.
To some degree, defensive teams are reactive, in that they’re trying to anticipate what the offense will do on a given down, and line up accordingly. A defense may opt, on any given down (other than fourth-and-punts or fourth-and-field-goal attempts), to prioritize the blitz (the rush of defensive linemen and linebackers at the QB), in an attempt to sack him for a loss of yards or fluster him so that he throws an incomplete pass, is forced to “throw it away” (an insincere attempt to pass to a receiver that is just good enough to avoid drawing a penalty for it), to get penalized for actually throwing the ball away, or – joy of joys! – to throw the ball wildly enough so that one of the defensive players catches it in an interception.
Alternately, the defense may opt to not run a heavy blitz but instead to focus more on pass protection – men assigned to covering the receivers – to prevent a successful [legally caught] “completed pass”. While the various offensive and defensive positions generally line up on the line of scrimmage in a manner comparable to a chess game, the one-to-one correspondence isn’t written in stone. A defensive coach or coordinator may call for double coverage on a particular receiver for some downs, making it much harder for him to catch a pass, and often discouraging the QB from even trying to pass to him. Great receivers (wide receivers and tight ends) can draw this extra defensive attention (although not all on the same down). When you see that happening, you can comment that ____ receiver’s drawing double coverage is doing one or more of the following: 1) indicates that the team playing defense is wary of that receiver’s scoring ability (more specifically due to his speed, ability to evade his coverage or break through tackles, etc.); 2) that the double coverage should be opening up holes for the run (making it easier for running backs to gain yardage on the ground, if the offense was running a handoff on that down); 3) that the double coverage assigned to one receiver is making it easier for another receiver to get wide open to catch the ball, provided the QB can see he’s open; and/or that 4) the defense seems more intent on pass coverage and less intent on pressuring the quarterback.
But what the offensive and defensive squads do is heavily determined by what the down/count is. Take this hypothetical set of downs in a Vikings possession:
Vikings have the ball [starting] at their own 20. (This means they’re on the 20-yard-line close to their own end zone, so they have to march 80 yards to score a touchdown.) First down [first-and-ten]: the QB attempts a short screen pass to a tight end, but the pass is deflected by a defensive lineman’s outstretched hand (great play on defense), so no one can catch it. (That was a risky play for the QB; if the lineman can touch the ball, he’s come uncomfortably close to intercepting it.) The ball returns to the line of scrimmage for 2nd down with no loss of yardage. Second down [second-and-ten]: QB stays up close to the line of scrimmage and hands the ball off to a running back, who picks up a lousy two yards running up the middle (into the center of where all the big linemen are). Third down [third-and-eight]: the offense will likely pass, because they need a minimum of eight yards and that’s [usually] more reliably achieved with a completed pass to a receiver than with a handoff to a runner. The defense anticipates this and assigns either extra men to pass coverage or to the blitz, to upset the passing game by pressuring the QB. The offensive coordinator or head coach for the Vikings has anticipated the defense’s anticipation, though, and calls for the QB to fall back in the pocket (far from the line of scrimmage) to enjoy a little more protection, and a little more time, from the anticipated blitz. The defensive linemen, seeing the Vikings line up in that formation, make their own last-minute adjustments on the line, maybe hastily re-assigning a cornerback or safety from blitz to pass coverage. The Vikings QB finishes checking off (the numbers and code words he’s yelling at his team), grabs the ball from his center, drops back about five yards, all the while scanning for his receivers to see if he can find anyone who’s open, and finally “threads the needle” between double coverage to his receiver for a twenty-yard-gain in the air, followed by another five yards on the ground, before one of the men covering that pass manages to tackle the receiver or push him out of bounds. Spectacular play for the Vikings; they’ve managed a third-down conversion (picked up a critical first down on their third down, so they’ve got another four downs to play and don’t have to punt the ball away just yet) that keeps their drive alive (they’re actually driving down the field now).
Also, a “false start” and an “offside” are the same thing, it’s just an offside when the defense does it and a false start when the offense does it.
This would be a lot easier with a telestrator.
There are some more differences, not to go too much into detail about it…but generally the defense can move around as much as it wants as long as they don’t touch a player on offense or line up over or cross the line of scrimmage (the yard line where the ball is snapped from) during the snap; a defensive player can briefly cross the line but if he hasn’t touched an offensive player and can get back behind the line before the snap of the ball, he’s usually OK.
Players on offense, however, have to remain still once the line is “set”, with the only players allowed to move at all being the Quarterback, the center, and optionally any one player at a time on the offense. Sometimes when it looks like the defense jumped offsides, it’s because someone on the offensive line moved a bit first, so at first it may look like the defense has committed a penalty, but you can usually tell if it’s a false start because the refs will stop the play. When the defense goes offsides, the play is allowed to continue (unless the player who is offsides has an unabated path to nail the quarterback) which gives the offense a “free play” because even if something negative happens like a fumble or interception, the offense has the option of accepting the penalty and they’ll get some yards and a replay of down or first down. Sometimes, if the quarterback realizes that he has a free play like that, he’ll try a long pass to the end zone, because hey, if they score a touchdown, they can take that, if not, they just replay the down.
I’m heading to the pre-game thing in a few minutes, but I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the thread for their help.
So thanks!
Hope you enjoy it! Football should have a lot to offer a chess fan, once you figure out what’s going on. For a newbie, it’s probably easier to watch televised games because the commentary will help you learn what you should be focusing on. If you enjoy the game today, you should give football a shot. It’s actually one of the more intellectual sports.
I became a much more intense football fan this year – finally wanting to understand the nuances of certain kinds of offensive and defensive strategies – and found this Wikipedia article to be an excellent primer. If you start with a basic understanding of what a “series” is (four downs, fourth down usually reserved for a punt or FG attempt) and which situations are tactical no-brainers (3rd and 9 = pass, or a very tricksy run) then this article is the next step up.
I haven’t read the whole thread, so forgive me if it’s been said before, but I really hate this crap. Some ill informed, uninterested person (not to disparage poor Skald for his ignorance of football) gets tickets to playoff football, while there are thousands of true Vikings fans who can’t even get a sniff of the Metrodome. Not that the Vikings are really worth it, but it does chap my hide that a bunch of ignorant non-fans get to watch a game live while diehard fans, who would cheer their hearts out and would love the opportunity to see a playoff game, have to miss out.
Here’s my advice. Get the ticket, give it to a 10 year old kid wearing a Fran Tarkington jersey, and count your blessings.
Tarkenton
Doesn’t matter now. The game is over. The Vikings choked it away.
What die-hard fans? The NFL had to give the Vikings an extension for the blackout date because they didn’t sell out the game in time. Any “die hard fan” who wanted a ticket would have had one.
Trip report?
The blue collar tickets sold out easy. It was the upscale tickets that didn’t sell. Most hardcore fans can’t afford to spend $160 per ticket, plus parking (25 bucks to park 5 blocks away in zero degree weather), plus concessions. For a family of 4, you’re talking about spending 800-900 clams all told. That’s not something the average fan can afford in this economy.
I’m dying to hear how it all went.
I realized about midway through the game that it would have been nice of me to include a primer of commonly-called penalties. Oops.
You realize I went to the game for work, right? Besides, I was the only ignorant non-fan in the group last night–which was probably best, since it saved me a fair bit of dejection.
Hopefully my sales presentation will go better than the Vikings’ offense.
I may start an “Ask the Guy who went to his first NFL game yesterday” thread later. And don’t worry about the penalties-primer thing; luckily the person who bought the tickets and passed them onto me had planned on bringing his wife, so mine was naturally able to go.
:eek:
I did not know know tickets cost that much. Maybe I’m just stupid, but why don’t they reduce the high-end prices during such times as these?
Supply and demand, ostensibly. Play-off tickets will always by pricier.
Odd, when the demand doesn’t quite meet the supply, but that’s pretty much sports-ticket law. Shit, you couldn’t get a Red Sox ticket for a mid-season game against Kansas City Royals for less than a hundred clams. Play-off tickets realiably reach $1,000 minimum – for shitty seats even.
I was thinking it might be like, oh, theater tickets. I took my nieces to see The Lion King a few years back and bought the tickets on the evening of the show; the theater wasn’t sold out, so they were offering discounts.
Up until Friday, the supply of tickets to the Vikes-Eagles game far outweighed the demand. Weren’t there something like 8,000 tickets still available before the weekend? Sources said that if the game didn’t sell out (or come close to selling out), the game would have been blacked out EVEN in areas of Minnesota. That’s horrible.