Rugby and American Football

The Game Room
21

I played suburban-level rugby for a few years and suburban gridiron for one. I’ve never played competitive rugby league, because I wasn’t anywhere near fit enough. I played loose-head prop (I was big/slow enough for tight head, but my shoulder would dislocate in scrums so I had to move to the other side) and offensive/defensive tackle in gridiron, although I was a more natural fullback - but our fullback was good at his position. We very rarely had enough players to be able to run completely separate teams on each side of the ball. I’ll also fully admit that I was hopeless at gridiron and still don’t know a lot of the rules.

Let me challenge the idea that in union every player’s putting in for 40 minutes each way. In rugby (union), the forwards are in every play - particularly the props (the biggest, fattest guys on the team). You had to be at every breakdown, and if you couldn’t quite get there you had to be one away from the ruck and moving fastest the instant that the ball came clear.

Wingers, on the other hand, as the lightest and quickest players on the field, had to be careful not to be caught combing their hair or staring at women in the crowd on the four or five occasions in a game when the ball came in their direction.

The equivalent in gridiron is if the two teams’ lines had to play both offense and defense - and three other games, besides - while the rest of the teams got to go about business as usual.

Compared between the two, gridiron was by far the less physical game. 11 minutes of activity feels about right. The lines would tear into each other more fiercely, but I wouldn’t feel it the next day to anywhere near the extent that I’d feel after a game of football - particularly if we were playing a team like South Sydney New Zealand.

Technically, in those positions? Rugby was much more the technical game. Gridiron was about hand and some gross body positioning, but if you stuffed up all that happened was that a defender got past you (or you didn’t get past your guy). In rugby, if you didn’t have your weight and flex just right in a scrum, or if you weren’t co-ordinating right on the lift in a lineout, someone might be in a wheelchair because of you - and that someone might be you. Gridiron might have had more plays to memorise - O.K., any plays to memorise - but the skill level to make sure that you’d be walking off the field at the end of the game was much lower.

Playing where I was, and at the level I was, the hits were harder in gridiron, and almost all on the front of the upper body/head - the fact that you were naturally squared up meant that the contact was more concussive. When I was tackling playing rugby, it was a lot more targeted to the lower abdomen and down, and there were many more hits from the side and glancing shots.

There was also a much greater culture of looking after your opponent in rugby at the level I played. If you hurt someone in a tackle, you’d guard them in the ruck. But if you were a cheap shot merchant or started playing dirty, all bets were off. There was one Christian Brothers’ breakaway I had to stomp the head of after the second squirrel grip he went in one match. I got sent off, too, but the ref cited the wrong player in the match report.

I’ll also challenge that you couldn’t go all-out in rugby. That was a rookie assumption that got a lot of people hurt. You had to go all-out 100% of the time, particularly in anything employing strength, because everyone assumed you would be and if you buckled or collapsed because you were only going in half-arsed, someone would get hurt.

Of course, all of this was at the levels at which I played - amateur adult, and not a high level of amateur. As things get to higher grades, things may change.

22

I haven’t seen the team aspect of football mentioned. By that I mean all eleven players on the field need to be involved on nearly every play. If an offensive player misses his block, the defense will blow up the play. If a defensive player misses his gap assignment, the offense will have a nice gain and might score.

Just one player failing on a play in American football, can change the result of the play, which makes it an ultimate team game.

I’ve seen game film where the split end on the side opposite of where the ball was to be run, miss a block on a cornerback and have that cornerback stop what would otherwise have been a touchdown.

In soccer we see games all the time either won by a side down a man due to a red card or at least where that side holds its own. In rugby that probably can happen as well. In football a team playing 10 against 11 would lose in every case except where the talent of the team with 10 was an order of magnitude greater.

23

As far as physicality goes, I think it fair to say rugby (and soccer) are far more aerobic than footfall. For lack of a better term, football is more anaerobic than the other two sports. In football, as in a boxing match, (or sumo wrestling) the participants must be very strong physically and possess “fast twitch” muscles for quickness over very brief periods. Being able to run a marathon is not a particularly good characteristic of an American football player.

24

To me, it seems like the way the clock works in American football combined with the idea that there are discrete plays to make a certain distance on the field are the main distinguishing factors between the two sports.

Without an American football style clock and no real way to do first downs, American schoolboys end up playing something not that far from rugby.

That being said, I think American football may be less aerobic, but it seems more strategic than more free-flowing games like rugby, hockey, soccer and basketball.

25

I fail to see why this is is intrinsically different to any other team sport.

QUOTE]Obviously enough, fatigue is the key factor in cases where a team is a man down due to injury or penalty. The strategy to hang on when playing short handed in any sport I’m familiar with is get possession and retain it for as much of the remaining game as possible.

With the frequency of stoppages, the number of reserves available, the ability of the offensive team to control the clock and to retain possession for long periods there’d be a valid argument that NFL would be more likely to win playing short handed than many other sports.

26

Not a chance. Playing 10 on 11 would be a disaster for the shorthanded team in the NFL, both on offense and defense. Being shorthanded on offense it would mean there was always an extra pass defender or an extra pass rusher that couldn’t be accounted for. On defense there would always be an open receiver or holes in your line.

27

Your forgetting the forward pass, which is another fundamental difference between rugby and American football. Every backyard football game I’ve ever witnessed or participated in had plenty of forward passing.

Also, informal football games still tend to have discrete plays, although you usually have four downs to score instead of four downs to gain a first down.

28

Absolutely not. An offense running 10 against 11 with even talent would almost certainly not get a first down and would not be able to control the ball. In passing the defense would be able to have double coverage on the number 1 receiver and still rush five. The fine balance between offense and defense would be thrown way off. When on offense, the team with 11 would be able to run strong side all day or make cuts if the defense overplayed. In passing they would have, in effect, max protect but with three men in the pattern. It would be a slaughter.

29

DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket package includes “Short Cuts” which are edited replays of all the games. They fit each game into 30mins and generally show everything from a few secs before the snap until the whistle blows, for each play. Occasionally, they’ll leave out a a play or 2 like a touch-back kick off, or they’ll show a reply of an exceptional play but pretty much everything you need to see to feel like you watched the whole game, not just highlights, fits neatly into a half hour.

30

Yeah, American football is actually really slow, I’ve seen the 11 minutes number before. I’ve been to a game before and its really surprising how often everyone just stops what they’re doing and stands around while a commercial is playing for the TV viewers.

31

Only one guy on an NFL team has to have any kind of passing ability. That kind of ruins it for me.

An eight foot tall and muscular 400 pound guy with average motor skills would be an asset in American Football. He’d be looking at a future berth in the NFL Hall of Fame.

In rugby he’d be a liability. Guys that big don’t have the mobility or stamina to get to the breakdown for eighty minutes, and having the hand-eye coordination to unload a pass is crucial.

32

Fast paced teams such as Oregon probably bring that up a good deal. Instead of 70 plays per game they’re running over 100.

33

Andre the Giant, height disputed but over 7 feet if he could stand up straight, and over 400 pounds, once was taken to the Washington Redskins locker room under the guise of being considered as a player. It was a publicity stunt, but he played his part knocking over towel carts and staring down the biggest players of that time. I can’t remember the precise year, but it was in the mid 70s. He was in pretty good condition at that time, but even if it had been done for real the cumulative effects of acromegaly would have made him subject to injury.

34

So it’s probably 13 minutes a game.