Category: Understanding Sports

What is a back shoulder pass in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a back shoulder pass in football? Whose shoulder does the phrase refer to?

Thanks,
Darrell

Dear Darrell,

A back shoulder pass in football is a type of throw where the quarterback aims the ball to intersect with the path of a receiver just behind him as he runs down the field. It is an offensive tactic that takes advantage of a fundamental defensive rule by breaking a fundamental offensive rule.

The second thing you’re taught when you’re taught to pass a football (the first is: look where you want the ball to go, not at the ball! Thanks Dad…) is to lead the person catching the ball. If the receiver is running from your left to your right, you should throw the ball to a spot farther right. This way, assuming the receiver keeps running at a constant speed, by the time the ball gets to them, it will be right in front of their path, in a spot that’s easy for them to catch while they continue running.

The first thing you’re taught when you’re taught to play defense in football is to keep your body between the player you’re covering and your end zone. That way, even if they catch the ball, you should be able to tackle them (or two-hand touch them or grab their flag) before they can run into the end zone and score a touchdown.

These two fundamental principles are not in conflict when a player runs horizontally on the field to catch a pass from their quarterback or if they run down the field, turn around, and come back toward the quarterback. In those scenarios, the quarterback’s attempt to lead their receiver will not risk putting the ball closer to where the defender is (between the receiver and the end zone) than where the receiver is. But, when a receiver runs down the field, away from their quarterback, then leading him inevitably leaves the ball on the side of the receiver where the defender ought to be. Sometimes, a wide receiver is fast enough to negate this issue by running past their defender. This puts them between a well lead pass and the defender and often results in a long gain or touchdown. Most of the time though, the defender is savvy, fast, and physical enough to prevent this approach. So, a clever team will deploy the back shoulder pass. Here’s how it works:

As a receiver runs down the field, with their defender between them and the end zone, the quarterback leads them but not as much as they normally would. Instead of aiming to have the ball land right in front of the receiver, the quarterback aims just behind where the receiver will be when the ball reaches them. If the receiver did nothing to adjust to the flight of the ball, it would hit him in the butt or land just behind his feet. That’s not what happens — instead, the receiver knows what’s about to happen, so she turns her upper body as the ball flies toward her. Now facing sideways, usually toward the middle of the field, the receiver is perfectly positioned to catch the ball as it lands… right at the receiver’s back-most shoulder. That will be the right shoulder if the receiver is running on the left side of the field and has turned in to the right; the left shoulder on the right side of the field with the receiver turned in to the left.

One disadvantage of a back shoulder pass is that it’s harder to catch. I tried to trap a pass in a pickup soccer game that was a little behind me the other day and I basically just fell directly into a pile of mud. It’s hard to swivel your upper body while running full speed and successfully catch a ball. In order to do it, a wide receiver will often have to slow down or even dive backwards, both of which make it harder for them to gain yardage after the catch, another disadvantage. The advantage is that it is safer than leading a wide receiver running down the field. Although back shoulder passes require great anticipation from the quarterback and coordination between him and his receivers to work, when they go wrong, they don’t tend to go very, very wrong. No matter what, the intended receiver’s body should still be between the ball and the defender, making it harder for them to intercept the ball or knock it down.

By breaking the fundamental rule we all learn when we first throw a football, the back shoulder pass exploits another fundamental rule – that a defender should keep his body between the receiver he’s guarding and the end zone.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

How does a wrist shot work in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a wrist shot work in ice hockey? Can you describe how it works and when or why a player would choose to use it?

Thanks,
Greg

Dear Greg,

There are three main kinds of shots in ice hockey: the slap shot, the snap shot, and the wrist shot. Each shot has its own technique and is distinguishable when watching hockey on TV or in person. Each shot has advantages and disadvantages and is appropriate for different situations. In this post, we’ll describe the wrist shot. You’ll learn how to identify it when you see it, when and what it’s used for, and even how to do it if you find yourself with a hockey stick in your hands.

The wrist shot is the quiet killer in hockey. Although it’s no longer the most common shot in hockey, it still has a lot of advantages over its more bombastic cousins, the slap shot and snap shot. It’s easy to identify a wrist shot because it’s usually the one you don’t see! For a professional player, the transition between simply skating with the puck and taking a wrist shot is seamless to the point of invisibility. If you look closely, you may notice a player position the puck slightly farther out to the side or even slightly behind them right before they move into the wrist shot motion. From this position, the player flicks the puck forward in a single, smooth motion.

Most of the power of a wrist shot comes from a shift in weight from one leg to the other – the leg farthest from the goal to the one closest – that’s also neigh impossible to see. In the follow through after the shot, a player’s stick may come up to about waist-high. The puck moves fluidly throughout a wrist shot from being on the ice but not in touch with the stick, to touching the tip of the stick, to sliding backwards along the blade. The puck will slide back on the blade only to around the midpoint of the curve, at which point, the players movement begins to sling-shot the puck forward. It’s called a wrist shot because a player’s lower hand will turn over during the shot, using the wrist to flick the puck at toward the goal. Take a look at NHL player Alex Steen score on a wrist shot here:

The biggest advantage of the wrist shot is that goalies and defenders have as hard a time identifying one as we do in the audience. A wrist shot gets the puck moving towards the net with no fanfare. Although it’s the slowest of the three major shots in the air, the suddenness with which a hockey player can take a wrist shot often makes it the best option. It also requires very little commitment from the shooting player. If she sees a teammate in a better position to shoot, it’s relatively easy to change the wrist shot to a pass. If the shot is blocked or the puck stolen, a player who has chosen a wrist shot should be able to recover and play defense with less difficulty than a player who may be off-balance after a slap shot gone wrong. The wrist shot is also the easiest to aim for experts and, because the puck never looses contact with the stick, for beginners as well.

The wrist shot is the easiest shot to practice at home. Take a hockey stick and a tennis ball and find a wall with no windows nearby! Put the tennis ball about two feet to your forehand side (right if you’re right-handed, left if you’re a lefty) and about six inches behind your feet. In a single motion, slide the ball forward, allow it to settle on the middle of the curve of your stick, and then shoot it forward by lifting the stick while turning your bottom wrist quickly up. You should get a nice, fluid shot. If not, it may help to move the ball back and forward a bit while it’s at your side and start the motion at the end of a backwards roll. Once you’ve got it down with a tennis ball, try it with a puck. It will be much harder to lift off the ground that way, but it is possible.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

 

How does a slap shot work in ice hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a slap shot work in ice hockey? Can you describe how it works and when or why a player would choose to use it?

Thanks,
Marie

Dear Marie,

There are three main kinds of shots in ice hockey: the slap shot, the snap shot, and the wrist shot. Each shot has its own technique and is distinguishable when watching hockey on TV or in person. Each shot has advantages and disadvantages and is appropriate for different situations. In this post, we’ll describe hockey’s most iconic shot, the slap shot. You’ll learn how to identify it when you see it, when and what it’s used for, and even how to do it if you find yourself with a hockey stick in your hands.

The slap shot is perhaps the most iconic image people have of a hockey shot. A player winds up for it, bringing their stick up almost vertically behind them before using all their muscles to swing it down. Instead of hitting the puck directly, as you might expect, in a slap shot, the stick makes contact with the ice a few inches behind the puck. When this happens, the stick actually bends with the blade of the stick forced backwards by the impenetrability of the ice. As the stick’s forward motion continues, the blade releases from the ice, getting an extra bit of speed by springing forward just as it connects with the puck. The result is a powerful shot, the most powerful in hockey. As you can see in this .gif from a “hardest shot competition” in last year’s NHL All Star game, slap shots can travel over 100 miles per hour!

The clearest advantage of a slap shot is speed. Ironically, the disadvantage is also speed. Although the slap shot propels the puck faster than any other shot, it also takes the longest time to execute. In today’s NHL, it’s rare for a player to have enough time to wind up and release a slap shot before a defender has hit them, stolen the puck from them, or slid into a position to block the shot. Even if a player does have time to get a slap shot off, they aren’t particularly deceptive. If a goalie has time to set up in position to save a slap shot, they’ll probably be able to do so. The times when a slap shot are most effective are when a player can execute the process before the defense knows they’re going to be in a position to shoot. This usually means one of the shooter’s teammates has the puck and passes it to the shooter as he’s setting up to shoot. This type of slap shot, directly from a pass, is called a one-timer. It has an added element of difficulty because the shooter must time and position their shot to strike a moving puck but when it works it’s almost unstoppable.

If you want to work on taking a slap shot yourself, your best bet is to start on solid ground. With shoes on pavement, a slap shot is no harder than swinging a golf club. It’s on ice that things get tricky. You must be able to swing your stick and torque your body with great force without losing your balance. Practice it incrementally, starting with a small windup and working up to a full one. You’ll know you’ve gone too fast when you find yourself sitting on the ice without having moved the puck at all. Another note for beginners — unless you’re freakishly strong, don’t try to do the trick the pros do to get extra speed by hitting the ice first. You’re probably not stronger than your stick, so instead of it bending, your body will take the brunt of the ice’s impact. Ouch!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

 

What is a hockey assist?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was playing basketball the other day and one of my teammates complimented me on a “nice hockey assist.” I know that an assist is the pass right before someone makes a shot. What is a hockey assist?

Thanks,
Conrad

Dear Conrad,

A hockey assist refers to a pass that led to a pass that led to a goal or basket. It’s called a hockey assist because hockey is the only one of the major sports to credit players for it in basic official statistics. A hockey player who passes the puck to a teammate who scores is given an assist. A hockey player who passes the puck to a teammate who passes the puck to a teammate who scores is also credited with an assist. To distinguish the two types of assists, the first one is called a primary assist and the other is called a secondary assist. What the hockey world calls a secondary assist, the rest of the world calls a “hockey assist.”

Every sport has a historical group of simple statistics which defined how casual fans and even insiders thought about players for a long time. Examining the statistics can also tell us something about the culture of the sport. In hockey, one of those basic statistics was points, calculated by adding all of that player’s goals and assists. This is perhaps simplest way to judge a player’s worth. In a player’s cumulative season or career point total, a secondary assist counts just as much as a primary one. From this, we can intuit that hockey values teamwork and spreads out credit for achievements more than most sports. This rings true considering some of hockey’s other traditions, like putting the name of every player from the championship team on the Stanley Cup, hockey’s ultimate trophy.

The hockey assist is not without its critics. In fact, a quick google search reveals people who call it a lie, pointless, and less sense than almost any other rule in sports. People need to chill out. The statistical revolution has come to every major sport and has completely revolutionized the way players are evaluated within teams. No team worth its salt is going to make player decisions on statistics as fundamental as assists or points. Furthermore, as people have become more savvy about looking for meaningful statistics in other sports, the hockey assist received some serious consideration. Here’s a great blog post by Kevin Yeung for SB Nation’s Memphis Grizzlies blog, Grizzly Bear Blues, in which he explores the hockey assist in a basketball context. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in learning more about the value of your basketball hockey assist!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What actually happens to the clock in the NFL when a ball carrier goes out of bounds?

Dear Sports Fan,

My friends told me that the clock stops in an NFL game when a player with the ball goes out of bounds. Now, I’m fairly new to watching football, but I’m pretty sure they’re wrong. I was watching a game this weekend and clearly saw the clock running before the next play after the ball carrier went out of bounds. Am I crazy or are they wrong? What actually happens to the clock in the NFL when a ball carrier goes out of bounds?

Thanks,
Vincent

Dear Vincent,

You’re not crazy, you’re observant. This is one of the most common misconceptions about football. 95% of football fans will say the clock stops when the ball goes out of bounds, just like your friends did. It’s not true. They are either avoiding a complex answer or they’ve never even noticed that it’s not true! Avoiding complexity is a good policy when it comes to explaining something to a beginner, but never if it results in saying something that’s not true. In this post, I’ll clear up this misconception about the NFL game clock and going out of bounds. In case you want to check the NFL rules themselves, the ones that apply to this question are here.

There are three main possibilities for how the game clock is dealt with after a play ends.

  1. It continues to run
  2. It stops until the ref places the ball on the ground in the spot where the next play should begin
  3. It stops until the next play begins

We can apply some basic rules to when each of these options applies in an NFL game.

  1. As a default, the game clock continues to run.
  2. When it may take a little while for the players and refs to untangle themselves from the result of the previous play and get back in place to start a new one, the game clock pauses until the ref gets the ball in place.
  3. When it’s likely that each second of game time is at a premium, the NFL, because it wants games to be as exciting as possible (this is an entertainment industry, after all), has created ways for smart teams to get the clock to stop after some types of plays.

Once you understand those as the three options, you can start making sense out of what seemed like an almost infinite set of possibilities, each with their own specific treatment. Here is how these principles apply to a ball-carrier going out of bounds.

If a ball carrier goes out of bounds with the ball, the game clock temporarily stops. For most of the game, the game clock restarts when the ref places the ball on the ground where the next play will begin. (Option 2) Exceptions to this are: during the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second half. During these times, the game clock is not restarted until the next play begins. (Option 3) In case you were wondering, a regular season overtime period is treated like the second half of a game, while playoff overtime periods are treated as though a new game is beginning and the first overtime period is the first quarter.

The rules that apply to the NFL game clock and going out of bounds are often simplified to, “the clock stops when the ball carrier goes out of bounds.” This misleading simplification works most of the time because it is true for most of time that fans pay attention to the clock. If it’s not in the last two minutes of the first half or the last five minutes of the second, barely anyone is paying attention to the clock at all. This is how a rule that is in place for 53 of a game’s 60 minutes can be completely missed by even the most knowledgeable football fans.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

The glass ceiling isn't breaking for female coaches but there is a crack

On August 5, 2014, the San Antonio Spurs became the first National Basketball Association (NBA) team to hire a woman as a full-time coach by hiring Becky Hammon as one of their assistant coaches. On July 27, 2015, the Arizona Cardinals, a National Football League (NFL) team made similar headlines by hiring Jenn Welter to their coaching staff. Just recently, the Oakland Athletics, a team in Major League Baseball (MLB) made their mark by hiring Justine Siegal to their coaching staff. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the glass ceiling preventing women entering professional coaching as equals is breaking all over the place — across the country and across many sports. Alas, it’s not true. The hiring of Welter and Siegal by the Cardinals and Athletics are vastly different acts than that of the Spurs in hiring Hammon. They’re not comparable in any way. If anything, these lesser hirings should show us just how radical, brave, and smart the Spurs are.

Welter was hired by the Cardinals to be an “assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason to work with inside linebackers.” She was one of four people to work with the team’s linebackers – who are a group of around eight to 15 on teams of 53 to 90 people. Come the regular season, and Welter was gone, having served her time. Siegal is likely to have a similar experience with the Oakland As. She was hired as “a guest instructor with [the As] Instructional League team.” The Instructional League is a place for very young prospects and injured or over-the-hill veterans to play. Its season lasts only for September and October, and is separate from the core minor league system. In other words, she wasn’t hired to coach the major league Athletics nor any of their seven full-time minor league teams.

Hammon, on the other hand, is one of six full-time assistant coaches on the San Antonio Spurs bench. She has already spent a full season with the team and is entering her second year. During the summer, she was asked to head coach the Spurs Summer League team, an honor typically given to a team’s top assistant coach. She led that team to the Summer League title. As premature as this sounds, there are already speculative articles being written about Hammon’s prospects as a head coach. Given the Spurs well-established record of stability, my guess is that she’ll stay with the team for at least a few more years. The speculation isn’t unwarranted though. As you can see in this chart, four former assistant coaches under Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich and an additional three players who played for him have become head coaches in the league. If Hammon continues on the path she seems to be on, she will become a good candidate for a head coaching position.

The problem is – will anyone team have the guts to hire her? As sad as this sounds, my guess is that her only reasonable chance is to stay in San Antonio and aim to be hired as Popovich’s heir when he decides to retire. Other teams just don’t seem to be up to it. Don’t be fooled by the other high profile female hirings in sports. Any movement toward equality is a good one, but it’s important to understand that they have been small head-fakes toward equality, while the Spurs move was a full-on slam dunk.

How does an onside kick work in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What are the rules for an onside kick? When do teams try them? What are they trying to gain from it? How does an onside kick work in football?

Thanks,
Jacky

Dear Jacky,

Onside kicks are chaotic, happen rarely, and are often quite confusing, even to football fans. The first step in understanding and making sense out of the onside kick is to categorize it as a tactic, not a special type of play that has special rules. The onside kick is a tactical option during any kickoff play for the team kicking off. A team that chooses to execute an onside kick is hoping to retain (or regain) possession of the ball instead of giving it to the other team as is normal on a kickoff.

A kickoff happens at the start of the game, the start of the second half, and after any scoring play — although touchdowns are followed by an extra point or two-point conversion attempt and then a kickoff. All kickoffs have the same rules. The team kicking off must line up with no less than four players on either side of the ball and with all its players behind or even with the ball when it is kicked. The receiving team must line up on their side of where the ball is. Once the ball is kicked, it is free for either team to take possession of once it has traveled 10 yards down the field OR been touched by a member of the receiving team. If the ball goes out of bounds on the sidelines, the receiving team automatically takes possession of the ball at their own 30 yard line or wherever the ball went out of bounds; whichever is best for the receiving team. If the ball goes out the back of the end zone or is taken by a player on the receiving team in the end zone who subsequently kneels, this is called a touchback and the receiving team gets the ball on its own 20 yard line.

An onside kick is a tactic that tries to manipulate the situation of the kickoff so that the team kicking the ball ends up with possession of the ball. The most common approach to an onside kick is for the kicker to try to kick the ball to one side of the field so that it’s about eight feet above the ground and ten to twelve yards down the field from where it was kicked at exactly the time that six players on the kicking team who are sprinting up the field reach that spot. If all that happens as planned, the sprinting players on the kicking team can leap into the air and try to catch the ball or smash into the receiving team’s players and hope to cause enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt that one of them tries to catch the ball but isn’t able to secure it. This can be a spectacularly violent play with players throwing themselves at each other and at the ball. A more subtle approach is to kick the ball on the ground either at a receiving player with the hope that it might bounce off of them and be free for the kicking team to corral or at an empty spot between receiving players with the hope that a quick player on the kicking team can reach that spot before the receiving team responds.

The kicking team only successfully regained the ball on only 36% of attempts in the NFL in 2014. The reason why we don’t see them happen more frequently is that when the kicking team doesn’t get the ball back, the receiving team gets to start their offensive possession wherever they got the ball, which, since onside kicks generally only travel about 10 to 15 yards, is quite advantageous to the receiving team. A 36% chance of getting the ball back simply isn’t worth a 64% chance of giving the other team the ball on your side of the field. At least, an onside kick isn’t worth it most of the time. At the end of games, when one team is trailing, it could be quite worth it, in fact, it’s often the only chance a trailing team has. The reason why the logic tilts so much is that once a team has possession of the ball, it is able to run time off the game clock by running plays (or kneeling, which is kind of a simulation of a play) that keep the clock moving. It’s often the case that a trailing team knows that it will lose if the leading team gets possession of the ball. In this case, since it doesn’t matter where the other team gets the ball, trying an onside kick becomes an obvious choice.

The downside of attempting to retain the ball on a kickoff in that situation is that the other team knows what’s coming. The receiving team reacts by putting a “hands team” of players out there, all of whom practice receiving onside kicks as a unit. The rate of success for onside kicks when the other team knows its coming is less than 20%. The overall success rate of 36% includes times when a team decides to try an onside kick in a non-obvious situation. These surprise onside kicks – executed at a time when the other team is not expecting it and does not have their hands team on the field – are successful 60% of the time! It’s a high-risk, high-reward strategy that’s most often used by teams that feel they are out-matched and need to find some edge to get ahead.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Why do baseball players slide?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do baseball players slide? Surely it’s faster to keep running than to slide in the dirt, right?

Thanks,
Ellis

Dear Ellis,

Running is faster than sliding but speed isn’t the only consideration. Baseball players have two other reasons for sliding into a base: elusiveness and stickiness. In this post, we’ll explain each of the major reasons why baseball players slide instead of just running.

Often in a baseball game, a fielder only has to catch the ball while touching the base that a runner is headed toward in order to get him out. This is called a force play and we’ve covered it extensively before, in case you need a refresher. When a force play is not in effect, a fielder must tag the runner in order to get her out. Tagging involves having the ball securely, usually in her glove, and then touching the base runner with the hand or glove that’s holding the ball. In order for a tag to count, the fielder must touch the runner while he isn’t touching the base and must maintain control of the ball throughout the process. A tag is a rapid and precise moment. A fielder sets up near the base, reaches out to catch a throw from a teammate, and then sweeps the glove with the ball in the direction the runner is coming from to try to touch the runner before the runner is able to touch the base. It’s much easier for the fielder and for her teammate who is throwing the ball to aim waist to head high. This offers the best chance for a safely completed throw but it leaves the fielder with the ball pretty high up. Sliding on the ground forces the fielder to have to catch the ball and then sweep it down to reach the runner. This is slower and harder than tagging closer to the height at which the fielder caught the ball.

You might have wondered why I described a successful tag as needing to happen when the runner “isn’t touching the base” as opposed to “before the runner touches the base.” This is because a runner must maintain contact with the base in order to continue to be safe from tags. A runner that touches a base and then stops touching it while play is going on is at risk for being tagged. Sliding helps a base runner stay in touch with the base they are aiming at for the very reason you suggested sliding might not be a good idea – sliding slows the runner down. Sliding is perhaps the only way for a very fast runner to shed the speed she needs to in order to not run by or overrun the base.

There is one giant exception to these calculations about sliding and that’s first base. Because there is always a force play at first base, the first baseman never needs to worry about tagging the runner. Perhaps as a way to even things out, baseball rules allow the runner a similar advantage — the runner doesn’t need to stay in contact with first base. Once a runner touches first base, they are considered on the base as long as they don’t make a move toward second base. This evens things out – the fielder doesn’t have to tag the runner and the runner doesn’t need to bother sliding. Once in a while, you’ll still see players, even professional players, slide in to first base anyway! This is a dumb move and is always met with skepticism and scorn by announcers and knowledgeable fans. Feel free to join in!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What does it mean to roll with the punches?

Dear Sports Fan,

You know the expression, “roll with the punches?” It means to be adaptable to whatever comes at you in life. Is that a sports phrase? What does it mean to roll with the punches in a sports context?

Thanks,
Sara

Dear Sara,

The phrase “roll with the punches” comes from boxing, where athletes are literally in the business of punching and getting punched. Although many people think of boxing as the ultimate aggressive sport, defense is as important or perhaps even more important than offense. If a boxer can develop techniques to defend themselves from being hit or being hit hard by their opponent, they are well on their way to winning the fight. Rolling with the punches is one defensive option in boxing. What I love about how the expression has moved from its sports context into general use is how precisely the meanings line up with one another. The parallels are almost poetic once you see them. Here’s how rolling with the punches works in boxing.

Getting hit is inevitable in boxing. Oh, sure, boxers are taught to protect themselves with their hands, so punches land harmlessly on padded gloves instead of chins, noses, or stomachs. And yes, dodging a punch is a great idea too. But eventually, every boxer is going to get hit right in the head. This is when the smart boxer rolls with the punch. As they see or feel the punch coming, they move their head or body so that it’s moving the same direction as the punch. If a punch is coming at their head from their left, they move their head backwards and to the right. Watch Mohamed Ali demonstrate with two classic rolls:

This allows the body to arrange itself into an alignment that’s used to moving and proper for moving in the direction the punch will inevitably send it. This protects the boxer from the most damaging element of being hit – the sudden rotational force applied to the brain. This rotational force is what generally knocks a boxer out and causes the worst brain damage. If you watch fights, it’s usually the punch that a boxer doesn’t see and therefore can’t prepare for that knocks him or her out. The head snaps backwards or sideways and you know the fight is over.

Rolling the spot that’s going to get hit with the expected force of the punch protects a boxer from being surprised in this way. If you don’t believe me, take your hands and put them out and up in front of you with your elbows bent and your palms faced out. Get a friend to punch your hands a few times. Experiment with trying to keep your arms rigid (it hurts, right) and then letting your arms go loose and your hands give way as your friend punches them. It hurts a lot less, right?

The beautiful part of this is that in boxing, as in life, every one is going to get hit. If you can find a way to prepare yourself, not with fear or rigid resistance, but with calm acceptance, you can learn to live through most of what the world has to throw at you.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra

 

What is field goal range? How is field goal distance measured?

Dear Sports Fan,

Here’s something I’ve been wondering about. When I watch a football game, I often hear the announcer talk about a team being “in field goal range.” Sometimes they even superimpose a colored line on the field to show how close a team is to being in field goal range. When they talk about the distance of a field goal though, it doesn’t directly correspond to the yard market the team is on, which is very confusing. What is field goal range? How is field goal distance measured?

Thanks,
Ron

Dear Ron,

As a sport and a culture, football sits at the intersection between precision and chaos. There’s no sport whose plays are more carefully and complexly designed and there’s few sports whose action can become as chaotic, as quickly. Football culture glorifies precision even while success and failure often come down to luck. Field goal distance and field goal range are both measurements which seem very exact but are actually quite wishy-washy. Field goal distance purports to be a measurement of the distance between where a field goal is kicked and the goal posts the kicker is aiming at. It is expressed as a number of yards. Field goal range is a similar measurement but is hypothetical. It is the distance from goal that a team believes it can score a field goal from with a reasonable chance of success. In this post, we’ll break both of these measurements down and see how inexact they actually are.

For both of these measurements, the number quoted will not match up to the yard marker on the field. The NFL moved the uprights from where they had been, on the goal line (as one might expect from the name!) in 1974 to the back of the end zone. The end zone is ten yards deep. So, a field goal kicked from the 20 yard line is actually called a 30 yard field goal because it must travel that extra distance through the end zone. A team cannot kick a 30 yard field goal from a play that starts on the 20 yard line. In order to have time and space to kick the ball over a horde of defenders intent on blocking it, teams snap the ball backwards about seven yards before setting the ball up to be kicked. Add these seven yards to the 10 yards from the end zone and you get 17 yards, the standard figure which people talking about football add to the yard marker of the start of a play in order to get the field goal distance. So, a 30 yard field goal must be taken from the 13 yard line. A field goal kicked from a play starting on the 20 yard line is actually a 37 yard kick.

Field goal distance seems like it should therefore be an exact measurement. Add seventeen yards to where the play starts and BOOM! you’ve got an exact distance. Two considerations stop this from being true. First, there may be some variation from kicker to kicker and team to team about how far back from the line of scrimmage a kick should be set up. It’s hard for me to believe that all 32 kickers in the NFL and 200+ kickers in college all like to kick from exactly the same spot relative to the line of scrimmage. I’ve never heard an announcer take the preference of a kicker into account when calculating a field goal distance, but perhaps they should. The second is much more meaningful. Football fields are not one-dimensional! Depending on where you are side to side on the field, a field goal may need to be struck at an angle or straight on. A play in football can start from one of three places horizontally, the center, or either of the two hash mark lines that run up and down the field to the right and left of center. Kicks from the center of the field are shorter than those from the sides. This effect is magnified in college football where the hash marks are much farther apart than in the NFL. Field goal distance does not take either of these factors into account. It’s a slightly fuzzy measurement masquerading as an exact one.

Field goal range is even fuzzier. It’s an estimate of the field goal distance a kicker has a reasonable chance of success and scoring from. A kicker with a very strong leg may have a field goal range of around 50 yards. Anything over that and the chance of scoring falls to below 60%. Estimates are great! There’s nothing wrong with estimates. But football, or at least football TV announcers, in an obsession with precision simultaneously treat this estimate as if it’s an exact number and leave out an important factor. The factor they leave out is the 60% in our example. Announcers talk about field goal range as if it’s the distance from which a kicker will be able to score. It’s not! There’s no distance from which you can absolutely guarantee a kicker will score. It’s important to know what percent chance field goal range applies to. Or maybe we should talk about it as several ranges — 50-55 yards is a long-shot, 10-20% chance of scoring, 45-50 gives a 40% chance of scoring, and so on. Meanwhile, television executives treat a range like a number and superimposes a line across the field to show how far a team needs to advance the ball to be “in field goal range.” A better graphic would surely be a gradient to show the increasing chance of scoring as the team moves forward, wouldn’t it?

I guess that turned into a rant on top of a definition! Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer