Could rugby coaching help transform American football? I think so.
It was mostly a great sporting weekend for me – the Irish win in Cardiff, Spurs win at West Brom…but so much for good things coming in threes – my 49ers just fell short despite a second-half comeback in the SuperBowl very similar to the Welsh one in the Six Nations.
But the way the gridiron classic drew to a close reminded me of something I wondered a while ago about the sport.
First, I feel the need to point out that I have pretty much heard all the jokes about how American football fails in comparison to rugby…the need for helmets and padding, the endless breaks for commercials, the “razzamatazz”, they’ve all been done, I laughed at them all, but I still do enjoy the NFL when I have the time and when all is said and done the Super Bowl is the biggest annual team-sport contest on the planet, something I can’t see changing any time soon. And when it comes to sports, while I certainly don’t enjoy ALL of them, I don’t see the need to compare them or put any of them down.
Anyway…back to my point.
In the YouTube clip below you see a peculiar play in a schoolboy game – rather than snap the ball through his legs, the center hands it to the quarterback who walks through a bemused defensive line before turning on the gas and it turns out the first time he gets hit is by his team-mate in the end zone to celebrate the touchdown.
Anyone who saw the Superbowl, particularly the halftime extravaganza, knows how much money is involved. And also anyone who saw Friday Night Lights knows the intense pressure to win is certainly not confined to the professional ranks…it goes all the way down to high school. This is why some coaches feel the need to think outside the box to get that extra edge.
With the clock ticking down in the Superbowl, my 49ers were down by 5 points and had possession, getting the ball very close to the Baltimore line. The had a couple of chances to score what probably would have been a winning touchdown, but the Ravens defence held them out and once San Francisco had used up their four “downs”, it was in instant turnover.
This meant the Ravens now had the ball less than 5 yards from their own goal-line, but they couldn’t just let the clock run down, they had to actually run a play. What they chose to do was something very clever given the situation…they took the ball into their own end zone and by the time the 49ers realised what they were doing and tackled them, the clock had gone to just 4 seconds.
This meant a concession of a “safety”, which meant the 49ers got two points and their deficit was cut to just three. But it also meant that they would have to receive a kickoff from the Ravens to restart the game and with a decent kick the hang time would mean the return would almost certainly be the last play of the game, and in turn the 2012/13 NFL season. There would be no time to set a field-goal to tie the scores…the only way to prevent the Ravens lifting the Vince Lombardi trophy would be for the 49ers to return the kick for a touchdown.
Now there had already been a kickoff return for a TD in this game, to start the second half. But it is still an extremely difficult thing to do, and given the circumstances it was doubly so.
So when the Ravens’ Sam Koch took the kickoff, it went 61 yards and was caught by the 49ers’ Ted Ginn Jr on his own 19-yard line, meaning his only option was to get some good blocking from his team-mates to help him run the ball all the way back to the endzone for what would have been the most amazing play in NFL history. In the end he only got 31 of the 81 yards he needed as he was tackled at the halfway line to end the game and prompt quarterback Joe Flacco’s reaction in the lead picture above.
But hang on…was that really his ONLY option???
Even if you’re not up on all the rules of gridiron, I’m pretty sure you know that a forward pass is allowed. But it is only allowed once, and only on an offensive play (so not from a kickoff return, for example).
However, there is nothing wrong with passing the ball sideways or backwards. In the NFL they call this a “lateral”, and it is usually considered a gamble because there’s always the possibility of the ball being dropped, which could mean possession being lost.
But when the game (indeed the championship) is on the line and you have nothing to lose, why not try a few lateral passes? Easier said than done, you may say…these NFL guys are hard-wired towards running as fast and as far as they can until they’re stopped.
Well if only there was a sport out there where the players & coaches were used to running with the ball and passing laterally? Not to mention having support players running with them ready to take the offload and bring the ball further? Do you know of one?
One feature of American sports is “special teams”…a set group of players who come on to the field for specific situations in the game like punting. In the pro game, these teams have their own coaching staffs all to themselves.
I wonder if one day a rugby coach will be drafted in, at least as a “consultant”, to teach them how to run support lines and receive lateral passes because I’d love to see how it this could change the game.
Considering what’s at stake in the gridiron at every level, it certainly wouldn’t be any more crazy than the play tried above. I certainly wish my Niners could have given it a shot – that really would have been a YouTube clip for the ages!!!
For my next piece on this subject (which I will write once an NFL team adopts my suggestions in this one) I’ll offer some things rugby could borrow from the NFL. Though perhaps the Under-13 rugby teams who play at halftime in the Leinster matches wouldn’t be too happy about Beyoncé stealing their thunder… JLP
