Rugby and American Football.

Personally I play rugby and find the non stop fluid action a lot more appealing, however I often watch NFL biggest hit videos on youtube which many people say are more brutal than rugby hit's but I'd have to disagree. I'm not going to go along the lines of the age old protection argument but compare the angles of contact. It seems to me in Rugby you are far more likely to be tackled front on and in football side on which often leads to players just running out of touch instead of taking the contact.

Another thing I'm interested in is why do Football players not pass like in rugby, is it illegal or simply not the done thing?

 

since im a lil short on time ill post my opinion on which is better in a few, but ill field this question quickly

in football, you can only throw the football forward if you're behind the line of scrimmage (the line where the ball was last put into play, idk it's kind of hard to explain to someone whose never played football or doesn't understand it) and after that line you can only do lateral passes backwards, however those rarely happen because the chance of the ball being fumbled or intercepted is pretty high and not really worth it.

 

Then surely the clever idea is to run a player inside the receiver, create the 2 on 1 and score every time, you can only pass backwards in rugby.

 

i like watching both of these sports. Rugby is sick some of the hits i have seen on youtube are insane. In the NFL you see some sick hit also but they are going more in the ways of player safety so i would assume you will be seeing wayyyy less major hits in the NFL without heavy fines, flags, or suspensions. Really hate the way the NFL is going all powderpuff these days i mean NFL players know that it is a rough sport and they play anyway. pretty soon you will see the NFL become flag football the way its going.

 

na, it aint work like that. if i understand what you're saying, you're talking about throwing it to one guy and then having a second guy running right behind him, and then when the first receiver is about to be tackled he backwards lateral passes it to receiver two? if so then my football actually ran something really similar to this. it worked decently but after doing it once the other teams defence wisens up to it and will watch the second guy really closely to either intercept the lateral pass or just fuckin smash the second guy right as he receives the ball from the first guy.

idk if that made any sense but if it did, yea

 

If you watched NFL you'd know that often people don't get run out of bounds and just take tackles because they simply aren't in a position to run out of bounds. The scenario also takes effect - if they are trying to conserve the clock (come-backs, etc) they make a special effort to run out of bounds and stop the game clock from counting down while they decide on a new play. If they want to run down the clock (for example at the end of a game and you are winning and want to prevent the opponent from catching up) they will make a special effort to stay in bounds. A lot of the times the tackles aren't immensely hard ones, but basically I'll just leave my statistics talk for themselves (from what I have observed). I'd have to say in an average Rugby game that I have seen there will be like 1-2 injuries per game. In NFL there is like an average of 3-4 and that's even with all the protective gear.

Not to mention if you pass it backwards and they don't catch it, it counts as a fumble and not a dropped pass.

Yeah it just doesn't work. Basically in Rugby from my understanding in 2 on 1 situations you have your one guy with the ball and he will get close and have the defender commit to him and then pass it off which sometimes does and sometimes doesn't work. In NFL, you can simply have your other guy block the guy as even the scrawniest punter in the NFL can tie up a defender for a couple of seconds, long enough for the guy with the ball to have gotten past.

Something similar to what you are thinking about exists though, it's a big craze at the moment in the NFL. It's called option football.

I couldn't find a video from the NFL of option football but this is from Madden 13 (Official Ea Sports American Football Game)

There aren't really heavy fines or suspensions in the NFL except for extreme unsportsmanlike conduct or helmet to helmet clashes. In rugby, I think it is largely similar.

 

I've only watched 2 games of NFL and thousands of games of rugby personally I think rugby is much more physical and more fitness but NFL is more stratergy and has crazy hits. I guess it really depends on which country you are raised that will influence your decision on which sport is better. PS best sport in America is basketball.

 

Regular american football. I love the sport a lot! I've never really played rugby or watched it to much, when I watched it, it looked pretty fun but it wasnt really a fun sport to watch. But regular american football is