How to follow football, American style

Kevin Cadle has been the anchor of Sky’s NFL coverage since 1998 and has worked on over 1,000 games in that time. He’s the perfect man to explain why it’s so easy to enjoy the sport, without having to learn a bazillion rules and regulations…

The most basic way to describe American football is to say it’s very similar to rugby, but not as continuous – it’s more about five-second bursts of physically intense action. Martin Johnson, England’s Rugby World Cupwinning former captain, is a big NFL fan and he described the difference between the sports perfectly: “You get hit more often in rugby, but in American Football, you get hit harder. Rugby tackles are about technique; NFL tackles are about the collision.”

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The goal is obviously to score a touchdown, which is worth six points – plus you get a kick afterwards for an extra point, a bit like a conversion in rugby. When you have the ball, you have four downs (basically a play) to make 10 yards. If you do, you get another set of four downs. If you don’t, you surrender possession. On the fourth down, if you’re close enough to making the 10 yards, you might go for it.

If you’re not close enough, you can punt it downfield or go for a field goal, which is worth three points. It’s all about working yourself into the best position possible.

You won’t continually make 10 yards in any three downs – at some point, you will surrender the ball to your opponent.

You’re allowed to suit up 46 players on game day, but only 11 are on the field at any one time: either the offence, the defence or the special teams, who come on for kicking plays. The quarterback runs the offence; the defensive captain – often the middle linebacker – runs the defence. The quarterback has always been the glamour boy, but the last few Super Bowls have proven it’s defence that wins championships. Other key players are the receivers and the players who protect them – the defensive backs.

The 32 teams in the NFL are split into two conferences, but no-one can win anything simply by spending money, because they have a salary cap and a draft system to try and maintain some type of parity. Put it this way: every year, five or six of the 12 teams who make the play-offs didn’t make them the previous year. You would never get that in the Premier League. The draft system means that the lesser teams get the first pick of players who are coming into the NFL each year.

The coaches are more important in NFL than in any other sport. It is totally coach-led, because he calls every play. The quarterback and the defensive captain both have a microphone and an earpiece inside their helmets, so they can talk to the coach up until there are 15 seconds left on the clock between plays. From when the referee puts the ball down, you only have 40 seconds before you have to snap the ball for the next play. People talk about it being a stop-start sport, but you don’t have all day.

Going to an NFL game is a completely different experience to any sporting event in the UK. Tailgating happens before every game – people in the stadium parking lot having barbecues out the back of their camper vans, four or five hours before the game. You get burgers and hot dogs, but you get the speciality of the area, too. In Green Bay, they just came up with a 20-inch Brätwurst smothered in cheese, because they’re known as The Cheeseheads. In the stadium, they sell beer until the start of the fourth quarter and they have guys coming round the stands selling popcorn and peanuts.

Fans aren’t segregated in the NFL, so you can be sat next to a rival fan. In 95% of stadiums, you would never see any trouble. At the Cleveland Browns, they have an area called the Dawg Pound for crazed fans, – you wouldn’t want to be an opposition fan in there. The Oakland Raiders have something similar, but other than those two places, it’s all pretty friendly.

Sky Sports is showing the NFL as part of an autumn of sport that includes the Premier League, Champions League, Formula One and Autumn Internationals

From the September 2016 issue of FHM India.