Quarterback v. Out Half (Rugby) and other questions

The Game Room
21

Well from my watching of American football (and yes, I do watch it now and again) the tackling styles are very different. There seems to be a lot of clashing of heads/helmets going on, something that you just don’t do in rugby due to, well, it hurting a metric fuckload.

Videos like this one:

Disagree with you. Notice how the guy specifically says to go in face first and just lets the head slip to the side at the last minute. That in rugby would be a very, very badly performed tackle. In rugby you hit with your shoulder, something that the guy in the video says you should not do.

So yeah, different styles.

Loads and loads and loads. Just about any time anyone is tackled can result in one.

22

Out half comes from outside half back, as opposed to inside half back, ie. the scrum half. Just another name for a fly-half, stand off, first five-eights etc…

One major difference I heard about goal-kicking in the NFL is that the on-rushing defence means you have to angle the kicks higher, and so your distance suffers.

Of course in rubgy the defence can charge a conversion but its usually only a lame attempt. They can’t charge a penalty kick.

I think the whole out-half v quarterback back thing is apples and oranges. A QB must learn a tremendous amount of data, but due to the blocking of his linemen and the time before the snap, has more time to analyse what the defence is doing.

An out half has the defence in his face almost immediatley and must try to pull off whatever he has planned in much less time. He also must be more physical seeing as he must regularly take the ball up and tackle. An often forgotten point is that the out half frequently makes the third most tackles on a team.

Also while the QB is virtually always one step removed from a play (either handing off to a RB or passing to a receiver) an out-half must think in terms of what space the winger will get once the other outside backs, and god help me some forwards have gotten their hands on the ball.

23

There’s no obligation in NFL for the tackle to be a grab, though, right? From what I’ve seen, hits in NFL are often just that, hits. And great hits, too. But in rugby union shoulder charges are strictly forbidden; you have to maintain contact with the player, which minimises some of the bigger momentum changes and impacts you see in NFL. The shoulder charge is allowed in rugby league (a substantially different set of rules whose emphasis is much less on rucking and mauling), but is banned at most youth levels and may end up phased out totally. It might even already have been; I don’t really follow league.

Personally I think a lot of the difference is to do with the fact that in rugby, the movement is predominantly lateral; the ball is usually working its way across the line as players manoeuvre for a break, so most tackles don’t occur at great relative speed. By contrast, NFL movement is much more direct. Which again, is something the padding allows, and like amanset says, it almost certainly all evens out in the end.

From the RFU:

24

Part of the misconception about football stems from the idea that the lineman are all big slow tubs of goo - I hear this all the time from people who don’t watch the sport, especially non-Americans.

NFL linemen are some of the best athletes in the world. Some carry around fat (in a similar way to how a lot of the guys in the “world strongest man” competition have a big gut and don’t look like body builders) and some don’t - lots of defensive linemen are 280-320 pounds of pure muscle. And while they are all extremely strong, they’re also very fast and agile. Even the 320 pound offensive tackles are more fleet footed, quick, and agile than a lot of non-elite athletes in more “athetlic” sports. They only look slow by comparison to other positions where the players have world-class speed. A 320 pound NFL lineman would run circles around you, and then pick you up and throw you for good measure.

And when people think of “big hits” in football, they typically think about a receiver going over the middle getting demolished by a safety. And those are indeed big hits - but they’re relatively rare. The battles between the lines features the strongest and fastest men in the world beating the crap out of each other on every play.

25

There’s no doubt that the NFL is far more explosive than rugby. And the players are much larger (Neemia Tialata, the heaviest All Black ever weighs 130 Kg/290 pounds). No doubt that’s a result of the different style of the games.

26

Definitely. I can’t imagine some of the larger NFL players managing 80 minutes running. American football is geared towards short, explosive bursts with plenty of downtime, not only as the game is played in quarters but also due to separate offensive/defensive teams a player will spend probably half the game off the field.

A bit like comparing a 100m sprinter with a 10,000 metre runner. Both fantastic athletes, but difficult to be brilliant at both.

27

One of the obvious differences between a quarterback in American football and any position in Rugby (league or union) is the need for the quarterback to stand still and throw in many plays, offering himself as a sacrificial target to an onrushing defender while throwing the ball downfield. As Dead Badger noted, the ball movement in Rugby is so often lateral, and no one that I’ve seen just stands still inviting a crunching tackle in order to deliver a dowfield pass.

And yes, the probability is high that the protection allowed through padding and such in American football encourages harder hitting by making such tackles safer. Contrary to what Ellis Dee implies, the adoption of padding and helmets was not the result of the outcry over on-field deaths at the beginning of last century. The NFL did not require helmets until the 1940s; but various helmets were tried off and on going back to the 1890s. It was purely a matter of choice before the middle of the century.

One of the reasons that protective padding is resisted in soccer is that the sport fears padding will produce more dangerous tackling attempts.

28

And more - with unlimited substitution, a football player can run 10 yards then be allowed to go sit down for an oxygen break. In rugby the player is on the field for 80 minutes. If replaced, that’s it - he’'s done for the day.

29

Big difference: there’s no need to change the momentum of the ballcarrier in rugby. Unless the guy is about to reach the tryline, it doesn’t make any difference if you tackle him forwards or backwards.

The typical NFL tackle involves a head-on collision in which the defender is trying to keep the ballcarrier from falling forwards. So, football players tackle high - typically above the waist.

By contrast, a tackle above the waist is considered sloppy in rugby. You’re trying to hit your man in the upper thighs.

30

That’s a good tidbit, thanks. Sort of like how Brandon Jacobs gets tackled, then?

31

Exactly.

32

This is changing in rugby union - it is becoming more common to tackle around the chest in the hopes of stripping the ball from the ball carrier.

33

In union. In league, tackling above the waist (usually in pairs: one takes the legs, the other hits the guy around the chest) is more common, as again, you’re trying to stop the player gaining territory by falling forward.

The “government mandating padding” also says nothing of the relative danger of the two sports (where this fact is often brought up). At the same time, there were also regular on-the-pitch deaths playing rugby: there were 71 confirmed deaths in rugby within three seasons, at the end of the nineteenth century, within England alone!

34

Most of the American football deaths at the time related to the “flying wedge” maneuver, with interlocked arms and massed bodies running at people. I would not be surprised to find a similar situation across the Pond with Rugby football at the time.

Never have understood why people feel the need to cheat and pick up the ball when playing “football” anyway. :smiley:

35

Yes, the flying wedge, along with the cavalry charge, are both banned in rugby (though what exactly constitutes either is down to the referee).

36

I found that rugby was a lot more grueling than football; not only are you playing for 80 minutes in rugby, but you are frequently sprinting like hell, and often for longer bursts than in football. On the other hand, as a running back I got crunched on virtually every play, whether blocking some juggernaut defensive end or flying linebacker, or crashing through the run defense. Most hits in rugby are only on the ball carrier, although scrums, rucks and line-outs involve a lot of tiring pushing, pulling and shoving. The only serious injuries I ever received playing either sport were two dislocated shoulders (one each, please!) in football. Of course, I had about a broken nose a season playing rugby…

As for the OP: Football has a whole strategic dimension that rugby lacks. Rugby is too fast paced and fluid to have more than general strategies, and is mostly a game of tactics. Football has a huge amount of both strategy (clock use, play mixture, line changes, etc.) and tactics (misdirection, accepting/declining penalties, etc.), and the quarterback is central to both. No rugby position has anything remotely similar to the intellectual burden a quarterback’s job entails. Even linemen in football have a bewildering array of blocking schemes and plays to memorize (and execute!).

37

I don’t think that’s a fair comment about not offering yourself as a target. A good out half will play as close as possible to the opposition defence (called standing flat) in order to draw as many defenders to him as possible before passing to another player with more space. This frequently means shipping a big hit.

Actually your supposed to drive the player backwards in the tackle. This allows your own players to ruck over him and try to turn the ball over. By forcing the player backwards you force his team mates to run backwards before entering the ruck, since all players must enter the ruck from behind the last foot of the player closest their own goal line.

38

I dislocated both shoulders playing rugby (at the same time!) and on that day I realized that my participation in organized team sports would be minimal from that day forward.

That would be the opposite of the way I was coached, but then head-on tackles are vanishingly rare in schoolboy rugby anyway. Most of the time the ball carrier is going sideways when you tackle him.

39

In the recent thread about Hines Ward, there developed another one of these same rugby/NFL pissing contests that pop up on the SDMB every once in a while. I don’t know why people can’t simply accept that the two are just different games, both requiring strength and athleticism, but also requiring different types of strength, fitness, and skill sets. What follows here is a cut-and-paste of my comments in that thread:

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.
ETA: Somewhat paradoxically, i think most NFL quarterbacks would be about the least useful players in rugby. Their skills just wouldn’t translate very well at all.

40

Yeah at schoolboy level tackling the player and bringing him to ground is enough. But top level rugby is almost a completely different sport these days. Since Union went professional (around 1995/1996) rugby league defensive systems have become standard. In these systems its not enough to stop a player, you must drive him back in the tackle and also make sure he does not off-load the ball to another player. This means that the around the ankles tackle has virtually disappeared and its all about having the strength to win the contact area.

Of course teams do “carry” a few players who arent great tacklers but fill other roles very well (Ronan O’Gara, Charlie Hodgson, Morne Steyn all come to mind, and all are out halves btw). For these players bringing the oppostion players to ground is good enough.