This weekend, America will have a national party when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers face the Kansas City Chiefs in the annual ritual called the Super Bowl. To a visitor, the Super Bowl is a mystery. The two teams are winners of their respective conferences in the National Football League. But The Super Bowl is the only unifying event in America. It touches everybody regardless of race, wealth, or political party. If it occurred on a week day, it would be a national public holiday.
That two thirds of American households watch the game each year tells only a part of the story. Many of these viewers do so from a party, a SB watch party. Neighbors visit neighbors. People hang out with friends. Offices hold viewing parties, in some cases, at the homes of the bosses. And it dominates conversation everywhere for weeks after.
If Thanksgiving is bad for turkeys, Super Bowl is bad for chicken — all that merriment goes with lots of barbecue meat, chicken wings and beer.
If American Football were a drug, Super Bowl would be the entry drug that creates interest and addiction among foreigners – people from outside the United States where the major sport is often soccer, the other football. The excitement of a Super Bowl can create curiosity among newbies.
HOW TO ENJOY THE GAME
American football is a complicated game to follow. But to stay with the flow of the game, a person only needs to understand DOWN and DISTANCE.
Unlike soccer, American football has no goal keeper or net. The goal here is only a line that marks the end of the playing field. The area beyond the playing field is called the END ZONE. A team scores a goal when it gets the ball past the goal line of the opponent into the END ZONE. Technically, it is a goal even if only the nose of the ball touches the goal line. As we will discuss, not all goals are created equal.
At any moment, you only need to know whether the Bucs or the Chiefs are playing OFFENSE — “has the ball” . And then you need to know how close they are to the yellow line in front of them. A team on offense has to get the ball across that line in four or less attempts in order to keep the ball. That line is TV generated and marks the FIRST DOWN line. A team can keep moving the ball forward by getting first downs over and over until it scores a goal.
The tv screen will tell the DOWN and DISTANCE. Something like “first and 10.” This means first down with 10 yards to go. Or 3rd and 4, which means 3rd down with 4 yards to go. A team has either 25 or 40 seconds to regroup between end of each attempt and the beginning of the next attempt.
Excitement is in the way the OFFENSE moves the ball forward or the DEFENSE tries to stop them from moving forward. The offense can RUN or PASS the ball. A person who catches a PASSed ball can continue to run forward until he is TACKLED. A run is rarely in a straight line because the ball carrier has to avoid tacklers, some of whom weigh around 300 lbs or 135 kg.
START OF THE GAME
The game starts with a KICK OFF when one team kicks the ball to its opponent. A player on the receiving team will try to run with the ball toward the opposite end of the field. He can score if he evades all the tacklers and ends up in the end zone of the kicker. But most times, the receiver will be tackled after a short distance and his team will start play wherever he stops. Offensive play starts on the 25 yard line if the kicked ball ends up in the End Zone of the receiving team. A kick that ends up in the END ZONE creates a TOUCH BACK
THE PLAYS
The eleven players on the field from the team that just received the kick off will huddle together and plan the next play. Once they BREAK HUDDLE, they will line up in pre-assigned positions until the CENTER, usually one of the fattest players on the fields hikes the ball back to the Quarter Back (QB). The QB (Tom Brady for Tampa or Patrick Mahomes for Kansas City) will hand the ball to a RUNNING BACK or pass the ball. The running back or the receiver (any player who received the pass) will try to advance the ball
A team scores a TOUCH DOWN (TD) if the team advances the ball into the END ZONE. The team can gain an extra one point after a touch down by kicking a goal from the two yard line. Or the team can opt to earn two points by running a play to pass or run the ball into the END ZONE. The kick is the easier of the two options.
If the offense can no longer score a First Down, it can kick the ball past the upright poles and score a FIELD GOAL to earn 3 points. If the ball is too far from the END ZONE to kick a FIELD Goal, it can PUNT (or kick) the ball to the opponents goal so that the opponent can now start its own drive toward the END ZONE of the kicking team. A kick off or a punt is a dangerous phase of the game because players collide at high speed as the kicking team tries to stop the receiving the team from running the ball back
DEFENSIVE PLAYS
The DEFENSE creates its own excitement from how it frustrates the efforts of the offense to obtain a first down or score a goal. Stand out plays are
- INTERCEPTION (also called a PICK) when a defensive player INTERCEPTS or PICKS OFF a pass that the QB was throwing to one of his team mates
- FUMBLE when an offensive player loses possession of the ball. It is a FUMBLE recovery if a a defensive player gets the “lost” ball
- SACK the QB by tackling him behind the line where the ball was snapped
THE STORY LINES OF THIS SUPER BOWL
The biggest story lines are about the QBs.
Tom Brady, the QB of Tampa, is aged 43 and is about the oldest to play that position. He has been in the league for 20 years. In that time, he has been to the Super Bowl a record 9 times and won six. Both are records.
Patrick Mahomes, the QB of Kansas City is in his third year in pro football. In that time, he has won a Super Bowl and been named the MVP of the League (based on regular season record) and of the Super Bowl. At 25, Mahomes is the second youngest QB in the league and represents the new breed of QBs who can run and pass. Traditional QBs like Tom Brady are not mobile but earn their keep by their pass accuracy and ability to read the DEFENSE
AFRICANS IN THE SUPER BOWL
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs have five Africans between them. They are among what I would describe the big bad heavy players that cause havoc on the defense or the offense.
The biggest most well known of them is Ndakumong Suh, who is on the Defensive Line of the Tampa Bay Bucs. That is the front of the defense to prevent runners from getting through or to disrupt the ability of the quarter back to pass the ball. He was born in Oregon of a Jamaican mother and Camerounian father
The other four are Derrick Nnadi, Alex Okafor, Kelechi Osemele and Patrick Omameh with the Kansas City Chiefs. Nnadi and Okafor play on the front of the defense like Suh. Omameh and Osemele play in mirror positions on the offense to prevent the big bad men on the defense from causing havoc on the offense. These four were all born in the USA of Nigerian parents
The NFL Game – Understanding how it works
