Rugby and American Football

The Game Room
1

I have played quite a bit of Rugby. Never American football. I have watched a bit of it. I know one person who has played both and his views are

  1. Rugby is more physical. In that you are playing for 80 minutes, running around and getting hit continually. In American football, your actual individual time on field is limited. (no idea if this is just for the pros). I cannot say much. But seeing the American Football games, I did note the amount of times play stopped seemed fairly lengthy and the individual players were off for long, sometimes playing just for a few seconds at a stretch. At the end of 80 minutes on a rugby pitch you learn the meaning of the word exhausted.

  2. Gridiron hits are harder. I agree. The protective equipment seems perversely to permit some kinds of tackles which you would never attempt in rugby (or even be allowed to), since you will probably hurt yourself as well.

3)* American Football is more technical.* That have to agree; the plays seem to be rather complicated and choreographed.

Anything else?

I do wonder if there is any overlap between the sports in the US, I do know that rugby is played at several US colleges. I think one or two dopers (Martin Hyde maybe) hage played both.

Pray do tell.

2

American football is the dumbest sport ever invented. I consider it a national embarrassment on par with the sacking of the White House in 1814.

3

As for #1) I’d say rugby is akin to racing a half-marathon while football is like running a 100m dash. Both are exhausting and differ only in intensity. A typical football play may only last a few seconds and can have at least a 30 second break between plays, but during that few seconds everyone’s motor is running at full capacity.

4

Having not played Rugby but having played a bit of high school and Pop Warner (youth league for non Americans) football I think this sounds right. You aren’t getting hit constantly and you aren’t running constantly in American Football, but when you are running or getting hit you are going 100% full force to the point of exhaustion.

Having watched a little rugby it seems like it must be similar to Soccer in that, because the movement is constant you can’t ever go full sprint or you risk tiring yourself out too quickly. You also can’t hit as hard because, without the pads, you are just as likely to hurt yourself as you are to hurt the other guy. The OP is right that the pads in US Football act like boxing gloves, they let you hit harder they don’t make getting hit hurt less.

I would also say that the coaching staff is more important in US Football than in any other sport I can think of. Because of all the stoppage in play the coaches have a lot of time to set up exactly what every player on the field is going to do on every play. There is a lot less room for improvisation from individual players than there is in Rugby.

5

Never played rugby, but constant motion would seem to weigh against it being a sport the behemoth linemen that play Am. football could excel at.

6

You should try playing American football just to see how fast and brutal it is. If you can’t do that try to get a sideline seat and watch the game from there. One huge difference is the force of contact. According to this site the average force of hit impact by a rugby player is 1600 lbs, whereas the average force of impact for American football is 4000 lbs. In addition that 80 minute game time is a running clock, whereas American football every second of the 60 minute game time is played.

7

Only if you count huddles and pre-snap time. The length of actual gameplay in a typical game is roughly 11 minutes. Granted, that is counting only from the snap to the whistle, which is misleading; the pre-snap activity, i.e. making adjustments and motioning and whatnot, is just as much a part of the game as the actual gameplay IMO. However, even if you count that as “time played,” I wouldn’t be surprised if there was still 30 minutes of running clock with nothing actually happening.

8

It’s played at more than one thousand US colleges according to wikipedia.

9

Your second point is interesting (which is not to say the others aren’t but I feel like expanding on the 2nd :wink:

As you may know there’s been increased focus on concussion risks
in all levels of American football. Medical advancements, players from a generation ago first showing dramatic mental and physical deterioration even in their 40s and 50s, etc. have all been part of the discussion.

There is (an increasing?) sentiment that the pads, dramatic helmets, facemasks etc. that were designed and implemented to make play safer may have had the exact opposite impact. It’s that notion — that if you’re in a modern helmet you’re a lot more likely to launch yourself at someone than if you are in the old-style leather gear. http://www.obit-mag.com/media/image/baugh600.jpg

Some other differences — rugby to me seems to be more all-inclusive. If you’re a wide receiver or a cornerback there may be 80% of the time even when you are playing that involves you running a route, then coming back to the line of scrimmage, then running a different route… and never touching the ball or getting hit. There are of course extremes — the offensive and defensive lines collide on every play, whereas a kicker could go weeks without getting touched. But rugby, to my eyes, seems like everyone’s pretty likely to get collided with relatively often.

Also… to me rugby seems to be more exclusively skill-oriented. The team that’s bigger or faster or better prepared is at the very least a safe bet. In american football, a playbook may be 60 pages. Every couple of years in the NFL some team throws out a new wrinkle and has a temporary advantage while defensive coordinators and head coaches scramble to figure out how to address it.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that gameplanning isn’t so much of a priority in rugby as it is adaptation… it’s dealing with a situation at hand rather than deciding what your next 6 plays are going to be. Excepting for general size, training, etc., (and the oddities of time travel) there’s no reason why a 1966 Harvard rugby team couldn’t line up across from a 2012 Harvard rugby team.

10

And those few minutes of playing time are spread across as many as 60 players. In football, players are expected to go full out on each and every play. The game is tailored to allow that. The players know they are going to get a good rest in a few seconds so why not? In a rugby game, everyone plays the whole 80 minutes unless they are subbed out.

In any case, I think people comparing the sports make the mistake of comparing NFL football - highly paid specialists in individual skills - with average rugby players. SOME football players hit really, really hard; some get tackled sometimes but never make tackles, some might get tackled once a season if they are unlucky. Every rugby player is expected to be able to carry the ball, kick the ball and make hits. So it isn’t a good comparison to put a football lineman beside any rugby player because the lineman only has one job and it requires size. If we want to talk about which sport hits harder, let’s put a prop against a place kicker.

I’ve played both sports but could only make it through a half season of football. WAY too much practice for so little game time. It just wasn’t fun.

11

It also depends upon the types of rugby.

Rugby Union is probably the one with which you are most familiar, however I would suggest that Rugby League bears more similarities to American Football.

In Rugby League, you have 5 plays to move the ball, on the fifth you either turnover or kick - this guarantees possession to both teams - which is definitely not a given in Rugby Union. It also allows for more set piece plays, but not to the highly formalised ones in American Football

In Rugby Union, there are specialists who tend not to make tackles - such as wing players, and other who carry the ball only in very limited circumstances, and are not expected to gain yardage.

In Rugby League, every player is a ball carrier, and every player makes tackles, every player will be expected to make tackles that stop opposition players dead, one on one. The result of this is that Rugby League players tend to commit themselves to a tackle more fully, the hits are harder - a Rugby Union tackler must ensure they are available for the rolling play and so they tend to have a lot of delaying, rather than stopping tackles.

Rugby Union is noted for rolling play, Rugby League has plays that last until the ball carrier is deemed to be tackled (sometimes a tackle can mean a ball carrier is standing up but is completely unable to move forward or pass the ball) Once the tackle has been made, the game stops and the players line out for the next play.

Superficially the games may appear similar to the novice spectator, but in fact they are vastly different.

The main ball carriers are fast, the aim is to get the high acceleration from one heavy duty player, who tries to lay it off to someone with perhaps higher top speed, but does not pull away as quickly. In RLeague the main scoring period is in the last 15 minutes, when the toll of tackles has ground players down, and many coaches will have a strategy that will target certain individuals on their opposition to do just that.

Do not underestimate how big Rugby League is as a game - here are some open plays

Here are some heavy hits, the impacts are frequently enough to stun the both ball carrier and tackler - you don’t tend to see them as heavy in Rugby Union - that’s not to say Union player can’t hit as hard, but they don’t do it as often.

In both codes of Rugby, kicking is crucial, its not the sort of pussy footing that you get in American Football, always right in the middle of the field, lined up with the posts - what is the point of that then - too easy.

12

With hurry up, no huddle offenses players can remain on the field and actively playing for several minutes at a stretch. They may not sound like much when rugby and soccer players are going for much longer but they usually don’t weigh 300 lbs and have other 300 lbs guys trying to push them around.

13

There’s definitely a lot of things you can do in Gridiron that you couldn’t do in soccer or Rugby (even if they were legal), but a flat-out sprint isn’t one of them. Players do sprint flat-out in both soccer and Rugby matches (for example Cristiano Ronaldo ran 96m in 10 seconds flat in one soccer match), because the recovery time from sprinting is pretty quick besides which the most you usually sprint for is about 30m (at any one time) in soccer or Rugby.

I’d say the main difference between hits in Gridiron and Rugby is that the hardest hits in Gridiron tends to be much higher as they would be suicidal/homicidal without the extra protection.

14

Perhaps in high school. In the NFL, it’s much, MUCH bigger. Here’s an article from ESPN from 2007, with a couple of pictures of NFL playbooks, and a note that the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive playbook that year was 700 pages. Add to that the fact that there are separate playbooks for the offense, defense, and special teams (though I’d be willing to bet that it’s the offensive playbooks which tend to be the biggest).

One thing that I know has changed since that article was written is how the playbooks are given to players. Back then, they were in 3-ring binders. Today, most (if not all) NFL teams put their playbooks on iPads or similar tablets, which lets the coaches easily update their players’ copies of the books when they make adjustments to the playbook.

15

I was going to pull you up on this but I thought I’d check to be sure. I couldn’t find any Harvard games on youtube so I went for a couple of good teams instead.

Here’s the All Blacks playing the Lionsin 1966.

And here are the same teams in 2005. (Awesome game, I was sitting midway between the 22 and the goal line at the city end of the ground).

If you leave out the physical differences (the players are undeniably bigger, faster and stronger today, and more skilled to boot) the main differences seem to be:

[ul]
[li]A lot more kicking in the old days, possibly because;[/li][li]Lineouts were a complete lottery and scrappy as hell before the introduction of lifting and the policing of the meter gap[/li][li]Rucking, you really didn’t want to be lying on the ball in the old games.[/li][li] Backline moves appear to be a lot simpler and made up on the fly, rather than pre-planned to teh extent they are now.[/li][/ul]

But other than that things are surprisingly similar. So your 1966 team could line up and not feel totally out of place. Although they’d get absolutely stomped by their modern counterparts based on size and skill differences.

16

700-800 pages! Eesh you’re right I was way off.

I know it’s kind of tangential, but the intriguing thing about the 375-425 pound NFLers is you can’t just be big. You couldn’t just put a giant fat random person in (reinforced) cleats and have him be an asset. You have to be able to move too. The famous Chicago Bears player William “Refrigerator” Perry was an offensive lineman, but to mix things up on occasion they even let him run the ball himself… in fact there was some derision later on after a Super Bowl game wherein it was pointed out that the team had let Refrigerator Perry score a rushing touchdown but didn’t have any plays that resulted in their all-pro, hall of famer runningback Walter Payton run one in.

17

Perry was a defensive tackle, not an offensive lineman - that’s the position on the field where being big and strong will get you the farthest on its own. Even at DT, though, your random fat guy would still have to be able to shed blockers and make the occasional tackle, or to occupy two blockers, leaving the linebackers behind him free to pursue the ballcarrier; he’d have to rush the passer sometimes as well. There’s a lot of skill/practice that goes into developing the footwork, balance, and hand techniques to play that position, not to mention the strength training necessary to not be simply overwhelmed by the o-line.

18

I repeat. Who else has played both sports and can they comment.

19

You might be interested in this post from mhendo a couple of years ago. As far as I know, he never played American football, but he grew up playing rugby and spent a lot of time watching football in the States. It’s an interesting post, and given the lack of responses to your specific question, it might be as close as you’re going to get.

20

Theee was a show on the Travel channel called “Dhani Tackles the Globe”. Dhani was at the time an Nfl linebacker, and in one of the episodes he plays rugby in England I think. I did a cursury search and it looks like there are clips of him tlalking about it online.