British rugby team?
Where?
Then you’d have to make sure he didn’t move towards the line of scrimmage, right? There are motion rules for backs but I can’t keep them straight.
Right, unless you want to ship him up to Canada!
If you can train the gorilla to (1) remain set, (2) accept a handoff, and (3) run toward the opposite goal, I imagine he (or even she!) would be well-nigh impossible for humans to bring down.
One problem might be getting the gorilla to wear required equipment. Do gorillas like helmets? I wouldn’t like for it to be my job to find out.
Eh, you can teach a dog to stay still on command, I’m sure you could train a Gorilla to do so, along with most of the other basic skills they’d need. (though I doubt they could throw or kick). But I’d be worried about them getting over excited when tackling and chewing someones face off. I’m not exactly sure what the penalty is for that, but its probably pretty high.
Assuming you could train them, I could really only see them being useful as interior defensive linemen or blockers on a punt or fieldgoal. And I only really see them being useful in those positions because they can be played as simple as a “you aren’t moving me” type of position. Even still, a lot of modern defenses are taking greater advantage of more athletic interior linemen as inside pass rushers and not just run stoppers, so their utility even there may be limited. The problem is, where they may have a size and strength advantage, they’d almost certainly lose in terms of speed and agility since they wouldn’t be able to grab.
I think a gorilla could throw well. The reason we can is because our ancestors needed to be able to swing from things and it’s a similar movement. Humans kind of suck at swinging from things but gorillas are pretty good at it, especially for something so bulky. Kicking would be harder since I’m guessing it’s our upright posture that allows us to do such things efficiently.
I don’t know if you can train a gorilla to follow the rules of a sport as complicated as football, but at the zoo we definitely train them to do a lot of things. They shift to specific areas when required, they sit still for shots, they get on the scale, they pick their arms up and put them down, etc. They’re quite trainable.
They definitely throw things, but I don’t know if they can throw a football with the spin that humans do.
Also, they are much faster than you think they are, when motivated.
A gorilla would almost certainly kill somebody and that would be a 15 yard Unsportsmanlike penalty. The gorilla might even get ejected at that point.
One might be able to throw far enough, but I doubt it could throw with much accuracy and it certainly wouldn’t be able to read coverage like a quarterback. You would have mostly incompletions or interceptions. In passing, distance isn’t as valuable as accuracy, so a gorilla would be worse than any human quarterback.
The best use for a gorilla, as others have said, would be as an unstoppable running back. If one could be trained to receive a handoff and then make a beeline for the opposite goal line, you would be virtually guaranteed a touchdown every time you had the ball, no matter where you were on the field.
They could be useful on defense, but this would be outweighed by the inevitable fatalities on the opposing team.
The major reason they’re so much stronger than us is that they can’t throw well. It’s a matter of leverage, and where the muscles connect to the bones: You can have slow strong motions, or you can have fast weak motions. Humans get a lot of use out of throwing things, so we’ve selected for arm speed over strength.
okay folks, let’s admit that there’s a logical fallacy in this thread…
So far: 29 posts, and ALL of them are based on the assumption that we are talkin’ 'bout having a single gorilla on the field at a time, wearing a helmet and shitting a lot.So we got a buncha posts about the facemask penalty, unnecessary roughness, etc.
Yet the OP says nothing about a single gorilla.
Am I the only one who is thinking of 2 full teams of 11 gorillas each?
No helmets needed.
Though there would need to be a few additional rules about poo flinging.
Here’s a video of one throwing (what else) poop. While they can throw, it’s neither far nor very accurate (fortunately).
I am virtually certain that this behavior would be possible to teach a gorilla.
That isn’t poop. It’s a chunk of dirt. You can see grass growing on it.
Are you saying Jeff George was a gorilla?
If it came out that he was, it wouldn’t surprise me very much. 
So I’m just gonna go ahead and say this since no one has yet. There was a Tuesday Morning Quarterback article a while ago that said there is actually nothing in the rule books that prohibit anything (man, woman, gorilla, alien) from playing professional football.
So the answer technically is yes
The simple, obvious answer is “NO, gorillas aren’t smart enough to learn the fundamentals of ANY sport, let alone to play them well.”
Moreover, the football positions many people assume COULD be filled by big, strong brutes are, in fact, the positions with the SMARTEST players.
I’m serious- offensive linemen tend to be the strongest AND smartest players on any NFL team.
Video of a gorilla fight at the Henry Dorly Zoo, in Omaha, Nebraska.
It looks pretty tame, at least compared to a 4th and goal situation, or a fumble recovery before the whistle is blown. I think that the sight of a large lineman charging in at full bore might just scare the gorilla silly. Or at least into retreating.
I’m going by the label on the YouTube link. There’s grass mixed with it, but it’s not clear that the grass is growing on it. The grass could have been pulled out when the gorilla picked up whatever it is.