Do you know that the Dallas Cowboys had the most average number of fans at home games in the 2023-24 season? Their average number of fans per home game was 93,594 fans. That is a lot of fans all in one stadium and they’re mostly Cowboys fans. I wonder how many of those fans know the basic game play of football. I will be telling you about the basic game play and things to know about football.
First, I’m going to tell you about the basic gameplay of football. Your whole goal is to get to your endzone and score points, or you can kick the ball through the post to get points but not as much as when you get it in the endzone. An important thing to know is when you’re on offense, you’re trying to go down the field and try to score points, while when you’re on defense you try to stop the offense from scoring points. You have 4 tries to get 10 yards, and if you make it 10 yards, then you get another 4 tries to make it another 10 yards. If you’re not close enough to the 10-yard mark on your 4th try, then you will most likely punt the ball to the other team. If you don’t get past the 10-yard mark, then the other team will get the ball right where you started your last try.
The next thing I’m going to teach you about is the rules. One of the biggest rules in football is each team can only have 11 people on the field at once, so in total there will be 22. If when the play is over and you see the referee throw a yellow thing up in the air, then there was a penalty on the play. The most popular penalty in football is an offensive holding call. They call that when the offense holds onto the defense when they are trying to get past them, or when their hands end up on the back side of the defender when the offense is in front of the defense. Another popular penalty in football is a false start penalty. That is when the offense moves before they snap the ball. They will call that even if they don’t cross the line of scrimmage, all they have to do is act like they are going to go over the line of scrimmage.
The last thing I’m going to talk about is running the ball, versus passing the ball. Running the ball is when the quarterback gives the ball to a running back, wide receiver, or sometimes the full-back. The quarterback may even keep the ball and run it himself. Once the person with the ball crosses the line of scrimmage, they can pitch the ball backwards to one of their teammates, but he cannot pass it forward or it’s a penalty. The other way to get yards is to pass the ball. When you pass the ball, you will snap the ball to your quarterback and then your quarterback will throw it to one of the receivers, a tight end, or maybe the running back. Once they catch the ball they will turn and run to try to run into the endzone to get points, or they will at least run to gain yards.
In conclusion, those are all basic things to know about football, but they’re also important. I talked about the basic gameplay, the rules, and running the ball versus passing the ball in football. Probably the most important part of football is knowing the difference between offense and defense. It’s important to know because when on offense you try to score points, and when on defense you try to prevent the other team from scoring. In this video, you will see one of the best NFL RB’s of all time run the ball, his name is Barry Sanders.
