Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
American football rules. Gameplay in American football consists of a series of downs, individual plays of short duration, outside of which the ball is or is not in play. These can be plays from scrimmage – passes, runs, punts or field goal attempts (from either a place kick or a drop kick) – or free kicks such as kickoffs and fair catch kicks.
The first American football game was played on November 6, 1869, between two college teams, Rutgers and Princeton, using rules based on the rules of soccer at the time. A set of rule changes drawn up from 1880 onward by Walter Camp , the "Father of American Football", established the snap , the line of scrimmage , eleven-player teams, and the ...
American football positions. A diagram showing an I formation on offense and a 4-3 formation on defense. In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players [1] on the field at one time and have "unlimited free ...
The offense is required to set up a formation before a play, subject to several rules: The formation must have at least 7 players on the line of scrimmage. [1] The 7 players are not required to be next to each other and may spread out across the width of the field, but this is rare; most offenses place at least 5 players together in a continuous line.
Curly Lambeau made the first successful fair catch kick in NFL history, for the Green Bay Packers in 1921. The fair catch kick is a rule at the professional and high school levels of American football that allows a team that has just made a fair catch to attempt a free kick [A] from the spot of the catch. The kick must be either a place kick or ...
This archaic formation was popular for most of the first 50 years of modern American football, but it is rare today, except as a novelty. There are many variations of the single wing with really the only common threads being that, first, rather than lining up "under center", the quarterback (actually called a tailback back in the day) is lined ...
The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football.Both games have their origin in multiple varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a football is kicked at a goal or kicked over a line, which in turn were based on the varieties of English public school football games descending from medieval ...
In American football, only one offensive player can be in motion at a time, cannot be moving toward the line of scrimmage at the snap, and may not be a player who is on the line of scrimmage. In Canadian football, more than one back can be in motion, and may move in any direction as long as they are behind the line of scrimmage at the snap.