By Jonathan Kay
While this article is funny, it is primarily an educational guide to help Swifties decide what NFL team to root for. So you have a baseline on what to know when you root for a Swift-supported squad like the Kansas City Chiefs, I will begin with a brief overview of football and the NFL.
Here are the most basic rules of football. If you get the ball (with someone holding it) in the endzone, that is six points. After that, you can either kick the ball through the uprights for an extra point or try to score from two yards away from the endzone for two points after a touchdown. If you don’t get the ball (with someone holding it) in the endzone and you just kick it through the goalposts, you get three points. Got it? Good. This is about to get kinda complicated.
When a team possesses the ball they have a short-term and long-term goal. The long-term goal is to get the ball in someone’s hands in the endzone. The closer you are to the endzone, the better chance you have of scoring a touchdown or field goal. A football field is 120 yards end-to-end and 53 yards side-to-side, with 100 yards between the 10-yard-long endzones. The last 20 yards before the end-zone is called “the red-zone” where, once you get there, you are expected to score either 3 but preferably 6 points.
How do you get there? You can throw or run the ball on any play, but you only have four plays or tries. These are called “downs,” and the goal is to to move the ball ten yards, which then gets you a new set of tries.
The National Football League is structured into two “conferences” of 16 teams. There are the American and National Football Conferences, each divided into four “divisions” with four teams each. Each conference has North, South, East, and West divisions, and the teams within each division play each other twice each year, once at each team’s home stadium.
There are three types of defensive positions and four types of offensive positions you should know. There is the quarterback (QB), who (almost) always starts the play with the ball in his hands. He can hand it off to the running back (RB) who runs. Every play, the offensive line blocks for the QB and RB by lining up five strong players across the line of scrimmage (the horizontal line that extends from where the ball is placed before the play begins). They cannot touch the football. Their only job is to protect the people with the ball. Each position on the line is different, but for now that is all you need to know. Then there are the wide receivers (WRs) who typically catch passes from the QB. Tight ends, like a certain Taylor Swift-associated person, split their time blocking as an extension of the offensive line, typically lined up next to the farthest most offensive lineman, and catching passes.
There are three levels of defense to know: the defensive line, linebackers, and the secondary. The defensive line, the counterpart to the offensive line, are the biggest people on the field and try to get to the RB or QB. The linebackers stand behind the defensive line and cover the middle of the field or try to rush between the lines and tackle RBs on runs. The secondary lines up on the ends of the field and far behind the linebackers to prevent the receivers from catching passes or running after they catch their passes.
Then, there is the “special teams” side of the ball. They come out rarely, only to punt the ball to the other team, kick the ball to the other team (who can then return it if they want to try and gain yards from where they catch the kick), or kick a field goal. Just know that when anyone comes to kick the ball, the special teams team (yes I know it’s ordered a little bit silly) is on the field. This most often happens either with the clock winding down at the end of a half or the game (specifically for field goals) or on fourth downs. There are a LOT of wrinkles with special teams, but they only come out for a few plays a game and I don’t want to waste your time.
Two more things. First, what are the ways a team can get the ball when they are on offense. You can catch a pass on defense that the QB intended for their offense, or you can recover the ball on the ground after someone drops it or it is forced out of their hand. This typically happens about 1-3 times a game, with anything above that indicating a sloppy game from the team(s) turning the ball over.
Football is a complicated game. Each team tries to put their own innovative, unique spin on defense and offense, giving each team each year their own identity. It has the most needlessly convoluted encyclopedia of rules and regulations. If there is one final facet of this beautiful violence that you absolutely must know, it is what a catch is.
You would think that defining a catch is simple. Just hold onto the ball and don’t let it go. That’s like an eighth correct. Yes, you have to grab the ball before it hits the ground, but there are a number of clauses that must be fulfilled before something is a catch as well. First, the catcher of the ball must touch either two feet, one knee, one elbow, or one ass cheek on the ground inbounds (inside the thick white lines to the sides and end of the field) after clearly possessing the football. If that thing is bobbling around in your hands, you get two feet down, and then you secure the ball, that is not a catch. The second complication comes from how long a receiver must control the ball. It cannot come loose after you get one of those required body part combos down inbounds and secure the ball; it must be secured “through the ground” or after you hit the ground and bounce once or twice. Finally, if the ball pops out of the receiver’s hands and onto the ground, that is a fumble. But only if the receiver caught the ball and then either took two steps or made a “football move” which is a poorly defined term that I don’t even know how to define, and I’ve been watching football since before I could remember when I started watching football.
PHEW! That was a lot of info. I hope you got most of it. But, now that you know everything about what’s going on during a football game, the question arises: who do you root for? Do you just root for the Kansas City Chiefs because Travis soon-to-be Travis Kelce-Swift plays for them? The answer, dear reader, will be answered in part two of this epic GW Local series, so stay tuned for next week’s article.
