James Harrison is a gym rat. Remember how gassed he was after his interception return in the last Super Bowl? That’s why most football players would suffer in a rugby game or lacrosse for that matter.
Of course they would suffer, I’m not claiming otherwise. I’m saying that they are better conditioned for what they do.
If you let the best football players play rugby on the field with the best rugby players, they’d be gassed and not much good by the halfway mark. Conversely, the best rugby players in the world would be broken in half if they tried playing football vs. the best NFL players. Not only that, but just about every single play would be a TD.
You mean we’re all agreeing? That’s no fun. 
Why is Hines Ward such a dirty rugby player?
Apropos of nothing except rugby, can you imagine playing against Haloti Ngata? The biggest guy I played against was a 315 lb prop and he was not anywhere near as muscular as Ngata. I couldn’t find a clip of him playing on YouTube but I’ve seen them and the dude can run.
I know a fair bit what I’m talking about. NFL players are conditioned to play for 6 seconds and then rest for 35. The vast, vast, majority would not be able to sustain life, let alone athleticism, if they were asked to perform for 40 minutes in a row.
I never said the best. I said average. Sure there are some tight ends and wide receivers who could make it in decent sport. I believe I’ve made that point in past threads. But the average NFL player is an obese steroid monkey who wouldn’t last more than 30 seconds, maybe a minute in any decent sport that portends to be continuous.
I never mentioned rugby players playing NFL. I simply said that Hymen Wards would never make those hits if he had to do so without the benefits of a helmet and 10lbs of pads.
Of course they would. Go local football team! We’re the bestest!
This thread has been great entertainment. You guys are hilarious.
I think everyone should identify what team they are a fan of and then give their opinion. I’ve guessed a few (Bengals, Browns, Ravens, Steelers - the AFC North seems to be well represented here), but I’d love to know all of your team of choice.
With that said, I’m a Steeler fan. Grew up there in the 70’s. Not a bandwagoner. My take is that Ward isn’t dirty, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a few bad hits on his resume. It’s kind of hard to defend the one linked in this thread. The Rivers hit, IMO was clean.
I’m interested in SenorBeef’s comment that “it happens all the time” (Ward hitting players needlessly away from the play.) I don’t know if this is true or not, but I find it hard to believe that if he was doing it all the time, he wouldn’t have more penalties called on him. The types of hits you are describing would be personal fouls if they were cheap shots. I don’t think he’s going to write a book like Jack Tatum’s “They Call Me Assassin”. But he’s much more physical than any other receiver I can think of, and some defensive backs as well. Can you imagine Deon Sanders making one hit like Ward? I think he would have broken into a million pieces.
I think there are a couple of things, already mentioned, that drive this. Ward does look for that crack-back block, and he’s good at it. I can’t think of another wide receiver that goes after players like he does, so he does stand out. He also has that perma-smile, which has to drive opponents nuts. He’s taken some incredible hits in his career and more often than not, he rises with that grin. I’d hate him if he didn’t play for the Steelers.
A poll I’d be interested in taking in this thread is whether or not you all think he’s a HOF player. I say yes, based on his career numbers, the offense he’s played in for the majority of his career (pre-Big Ben), and his blocking ability.
Bullshit. Hines ward would break most guys in half with or without pads. There are very few rugby players in the world who know what it means to be hit repeatedly with the speed and power they would see in the NFL.
I still haven’t seen any evidence you know anything about sports in general, other than making generic cliched jokes about them. Congrats. My wife has probably never heard a few of them.
I don’t know, if we look at the talented rugby players who’ve come to the NFL, they’ve made some pretty fearsome…punters.
OK, here’s my take on the whole rugby/NFL pissing contest. The following is the opinion of someone who grew up playing rugby, and who spent his whole childhood and much of his adult life following it closely (both rugby union and rugby league), and who has now lived in the US and followed NFL football for nearly a decade. NFL examples will come from my own team, the Baltimore Ravens.
First, let’s dispense with one of the rugby-lovers’ bugaboos about the NFL: the issue of pads and helmets. The fact that NFL players wear pads and helmets does NOT mean that they aren’t tough enough for rugby. The hits in the NFL are huge, and if you can take NFL hits every week, you can take rugby hits. I am 6 feet tall, and weigh 184 (84kg), and if i were given a choice between stepping onto the field as a member of a rugby backline (where i used to play), and an NFL running or receiving corps, i’d take the rugby field any day.
My argument from here on is going to proceed from the assumption that NFL players are, indeed, tough enough to play rugby. If toughness is not the difference, then it comes down to other things like size (NOT the same as toughness) and skill sets.
I don’t believe that most 300+ pound linemen (offensive or defensive) could make it in rugby. The continuous intensity of the game, as well as requirements such as lineout jumping, would mitigate against it. I’m not arguing that these guys are unfit; for their size, they’re incredibly fit. But the way that rugby works, with ongoing plays and rapid switches back and forth between defending and attacking, combined with the fact that everyone plays both offense and defense, would just wear them down. I simply can’t imagine someone like 315 pond nose tackle Kelly Gregg being able to participate in a ruck/maul on one side of the field, and then turn up 40 yards away 20 seconds later to be a part of the next one. And so on. There might be some exceptions, but rugby tends to favor more mobile players.
I do believe, though, there there are plenty of NFL players who would be awesome at rugby. Interestingly, despite the fact that they would have to learn to pass and perform other offensive tasks, i think the NFL players best suited to rugby would probably be defensive players, in particular linebackers and safeties.
Two guys that come to mind, for me, are Ray Lewis and Ed Reed of the Ravens. Lewis (or just about any other quality middle linebacker) would be a monster rugby player, if he could be taught the strategy and a few specific skills. His speed, strength, and sheer tackling ability would be awesome in rugby. I think Ed Reed might be even better, because he is really fast, has incredible anticipation, and all his interceptions and runbacks demonstrate a level of skill with the ball that would fit very well into a rugby team.
What sets the middle linebackers apart, also, is not just that they can hit, but that they can actually tackle, in the way required by rugby. There is no “down by contact” rule in rugby. If you smack into someone with a shoulder and knock them over, they can get back up and keep running, or pass the ball to someone else. For this reason, shoulder-charge hits are actually discouraged in rugby. A good rugby tackle doesn’t just hit hard, it wraps ups the ball-carrier to prevent further progress, and linebackers often have to use such proper front-on tackling technique when taking on running backs coming up the guts or tight ends coming across the middle.
There’s no reason also that a bunch of tight ends couldn’t be great rugby players. With his height, size, ball control, and jumping ability, Todd Heap would make an awesome second row forward. And if they could be taught to pass and play the offensive side of rugby well, i think plenty of wide receivers would make great centers or wingers in rugby.
What people often fail to take into account in these debates over rugby and NFL is also the very different nature of the game itself, particularly the types of movement that make it up. NFL is, by its very nature, a game where there is movement in multiple directions at once, at multiple places on the field. Watch any NFL play and you’ll see people in motion on a huge variety of different vectors, with many possible targets for the ball. Rugby, by contrast, is much more limited in its motion at any one time. This is largely due to the restrictions imposed by the rules themselves (passes must go backwards; the offside rule).
Also, the NFL has rules that specifically allow contact and hitting of offensive players who are not carrying the ball. In rugby, by contrast, if you smack into someone without the ball, you will likely draw a penalty, and NFL moves like screens and blocks are, in rugby, termed “obstruction” and result in turning the ball over to the other team.
None of these factors make one sports inherently better or tougher than the other, but they do mean that anyone making the switch to rugby would have to accommodate themselves to a totally different style of game. The strategy, on defense, is different in rugby than in the NFL; you have to watch the other team in a different way, and react in different ways to changing circumstances. You have to learn things like keeping the line, playing your man properly, knowing when to join a tackle and when to hold off in case the ball comes free, knowing what to do in cases of overlap or the insertion of the fullback into the line.
Similarly, on offense, you don’t just run a route or block your assigned guy (yes, i know that’s oversimplifying); you need to keep your position, and adjust to the flow of what your team is doing. If someone else on your team has the ball, you are not looking to block the opposition’s defenders; you are looking to put yourself in a position to receive the ball if your teammate passes it, or to help him in the ruck and maul if he gets tackled. What to do in these situations takes some experience.
While i don’t think that hitting or tackling in rugby is any more difficult than in the NFL, as i said it has different requirements, and when you are defending, your task is different. Because there are no blocks, and no forward passes, it is much more unusual in rugby to get a hit on a defenseless player, as happens in the NFL quite often. In NFL, it’s not uncommon to see a tight end or receiver coming across the middle to catch the ball, knowing he’s going to take a big hit before he has a chance to prepare himself. In rugby, because the ball is passed backwards, and running tends to occur vertically up and down the field, the ball-carrier is nearly always prepared for you. Yes, there are occasions when you can smash a guy when he’s in a vulnerable position trying to catch a pass, but those types of passes are called “hospital passes” for a reason, and don’t happen very often.
Also, in the NFL, once a ball has been either handed off to a runner or passed to a receiver, defenders can usually rest assured that if they can tackle that one player with the ball, the play will be over (obvious exceptions, such as double reverses, etc., aside). But in rugby, because (almost) everyone knows how to pass, and passing is an integral part of the game, defenders can’t all converge on the ball-0carrier without risking that he will get it to a teammate who will then take advantage of your bunching to get away.
Basically, in my opinion, the main impediment to many NFL players switching to rugby would be learning a few skills, such as passing, rucking and mauling, and getting familiar enough with the way the game is played to know where they need to be and what they need to do in given situations. None of this is easy, especially if you haven’t grown up playing the sport, but none of it is insurmountable, and certainly don’t think there’s anything about the toughness or physical abilities of most NFL players that would prevent them from making the transition.
Actually, i believe that the punters have more often been from Australian Rules football than from rugby.
I very much enjoyed that post. I really don’t care to compare sports until I hear the whole “American football players are pussies” comments. Most people don’t realize just how violent the sport is, and how many people were dying when helmets became the norm. The sports just evolved differently, and the dynamics of the game make for incredibly vicious collisions.
Enlightening post, mhendo.