American Football 101, Part 1: The Offensive Side | Thebigtip

To My good friends in Australia who might not know the game of American Football.

As the 2010 NFL season draws closer, there are still many people out there who do not understand the game. So before the season gets underway, we here at playtowinthegame are going to teach you everything you need to know.

If you have a friend who is an NFL fan, the first things to figure out is if they have a favorite team and how big of a fan they are. If they are a just a casual fan just reading this should be more than enough to help you out. All you have to do is find when the biggest games of the season are in addition to this series. There are several places to find out when those games are going to be played, ESPN or any other major sports site should have all the details you will need.

If they are a huge fan you might have to do some leg work on your own. It would be best to Google the team and find out some history. Most teams have their own home pages and you can normally find some good information on Wikipedia. It’s always good to know who the best players are either on past teams or present teams and some of the biggest games in the history of the team no matter if they are wins or losses.  It is also good to know who the present coach is and some of the best past coaches are. 

In the first part of this series we are going to explain the offensive side of football. We will explain the positions starting with what they are called and what job they do on the field. We will also look at the job of coaches with the offense. Then we will explain some common offensive formations. We will also look at some of the lingo or terminology associated with the offensive side of football.

The Job of the Offense

The offense like the defense (we will see later) is always on the field for one team or another. The offense is normally designed by the head coach or the offensive coordinator. This is called the offensive system and it dictates what kind of plays the offense runs (We will look at a few offensive systems later in this piece).

The offense can receive the ball a number of ways. The two most common is a kickoff or a punt.

The kickoff happens at the beginning of the game, after halftime, or when the other teams scores points. The punt happens when the defense stops the offense from getting a first down (see below).

Other ways the offense can get the ball will be talked about later when we discuss defense. First thing a legal formation has to have seven players on the line of scrimmage. This is the five offensive linemen and tight ends or receivers to make up the full seven players (discussed below).

Now when the offense first has the ball (for now let’s say from a kickoff or punt) it is considered to be 1st down. The offense will have first, second, and third down to try to gain 10 yards( from the original spot if there are not penalties or plays for a loss that make it longer to get the 10 yards needed for the new first down. Also penalties will be discussed later.)

If they can gain the ten yards or more they are given a new set of downs. If they can do it repeatedly this is called a drive. The reasons it’s a drive is because the offense is driving down the field.

If the offense cannot gain 10 yards after 3 downs then on fourth down they are forced to punt the ball back to the opposing team. (Note: the offense does not have to punt the ball on fourth down. They can go for a first down but if they fail the opposing team gets the ball for the offensive ball carrier was stopped. This normally happens when a team is behind and must keep the ball to score points to try to win or a coach decides to gamble trying to trick the other teams coach or get an advantage in momentum.)

The offense’s job is to score points. This can be done one of two ways.

The first by scoring a touchdown—this is worth a total of 6 points. They do this is by placing some part of the ball over the goal line before they are tackled or forward movement is stopped by the defense.  The goal line is the last line on either end of the field. The offense can score by ether running the ball or passing it down the field.