Skill position

Transcription

One of the most confusing things about football, especially when you are just starting to get into the sport is where are all these guys standing and why are they there? What are the different positions that we have in football? That is what I want to take a look at in this video. If you are afraid of geometry, you don't need to be because we are not going to get any more complicated than the X's and the O's. The O's represent the players on offense, the X's are the guys on defense. We'll take a look at each of them here. The first thing to note is is that there is a line separating the offense from the defense. This is because the ball will be placed in the middle. it is separated by this law in the offense guys cannot The offensive nor the defensive guys can go over this line or they would be considered 'offside.' This yellow line is called the 'Line of Scrimmage.' And the line of scrimmage separates the offense from the defense that is where the ball is. First, lets take a look at the guys on offense, who are these O's down here. The offense starts with the 'offensive line,' who are the orange circles. As you can see, there are five men on the offensive line. The man in the middle, is fittingly called the 'Center.' The center is going to be the man who snaps the ball back to the 'Quarterback.' The quarterback is the grey guy standing behind the center, we'll get back to him in a second. On either side of the center, we have our other offensive lineman. On the left side, we have our 'Left guard,' who stands right beside the center. And to his left we have the 'Left tackle.' This is different than we'll be talking about as far as "tackling a player." In this case it is simply the name of his position. You can probably guess that on this side to the right of the center, we have the 'Right guard' and on the outside we have our 'Right tackle.' These offensive linemen their job is to stand there and prevent the defense from getting to the quarterback. Because the quarterback is going to have the ball, and we'll see that the defense is going to want to "tackle" or to pull down the guy who has the ball. The offensive linemen are usually big guys and their job is to stop the defense from getting to the ball and the quarterback. So there are our five offensive lineman. As we said, right behind me offensive line is the quarterback. The center is going to snap the ball back to the quarterback and the quarterback then has a decision: he can either pass the ball or he can hand off the ball. For a hand off, he would turn to one of these guys behind him. Back here are two, misnamed guys in the 'Fullback' and the 'Halfback.' Although as you can see, you might think they are backwards because the fullback should be further back than the halfback, but that's not the case. That is just the way they are named. Either way, these guys are both considered 'Running backs.' So if the quarterback does decide to hand the ball off he will turn around with the ball, and usually--it can be to either player--but usually he will hand off to the halfback. And the halfback would then run with the ball. If the quarterback does decide to pass, he can pass to one of these guys way out on the end, called 'Wide receivers.' The man on the left is another wide receiver. Our final guy, in actuality he is closer to the offensive line. He is called the 'Tight end.' Sometimes will will run and receive, other times he is like a sixth offensive linemen by blocking. And these are all of the positions on offense. I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but there are 11 guys both on offense and defense. It is not required that they line up like this, typically this is what you will see, but it is not required. Sometimes the wide receiver will be out further and instead of a tight end we'll have a third wide receiver and he'll line up out here. So you could have three wide receivers and no tight ends on the field. Or maybe you only have one running back and one of these guys is free to move up and become a second tight end or maybe a third wide receiver. There are eleven guys, but they can exchange by running on and off the field between each play. It does not even have to be what you did on the last play. Those are our offensive positions. Moving to defense now, you can see that opposite the offensive line they are lined up in a different way because their goal is to try to stop their goal was to try to to stop whoever on offense has the ball. Just like the offense, they are not required to line up in this way, but they are currently lined up in what is called a '4-3 defense.' Let's look at where these numbers come from. The four, or the first number, comes from the line. This is the 'defensive line.' As you can see there are four guys, which is where we get the four Then there are three guys behind them. And if you guessed this is where the three comes from, you are correct. We have four defensive linemen, and three 'linebackers' because they're behind the defensive line. So this is where we get the 4-3. Then on both sides, usually defending the wide receivers, are we have the 'Cornerbacks' Not to be confused with the Quarterback, these are Cornerbacks. And then the two guys back here, who are usually pretty fast guys, these are the 'Safeties.' Sometimes you'll have a 'Strong safety' and the other guy is known as a 'Free safety.' Again this is not the required way that these guys line up, just like offense they have some leeway in how they want to position their players. The other common way that you might see them lined up, other than a 4-3 is a '3-4 defense' which would mean that one of the linemen will move back so that you will have three linemen and four linebackers and that is the 3-4 defense. These guys can stand wherever they want, sometimes you see these guys come up closer to the line, but technically you still have four linebackers and three defensive linemen. Overall though, that's the basic layout of the positions. You have your safeties in the back, linebackers, your defensive line, and two cornerbacks on defense. Again, either team can swap players between each play if they want to there's really no requirement of any one guy standing in one place they can move around and try to confuse the offense, but we'll get into that when we talk about more of the strategy involved in the game.