Football 201: Offensive Speed

Besides a running play, the other main option a team has in trying to move the ball down the field is the throw the ball.

As the modern version of the game emerged in the 1920's and 1930's, two more specialist players developed: a throwing specialist, (called the "quarterback"), as well as pass-catching specialists. While the quarterback's main skill has to be throwing accurately, the wide receiver's main attribute, besides good hands to catch a football, is the ability to run faster than the defense. Speed.

Football is not like soccer or rugby where the players are continuously in action. Since the play stops after each down, teams attempt set plays: choreographed movement. This choreography is what makes football different from other games and what makes it so exciting. It's a marvelous thing to watch when it's done well.

So if you think about it the team on offense has a huge advantage--they know what's supposed to happen on any given play while the defense doesn't. Since the wide receiver knows what the play will be and the defense doesn't, he/she should be able to get an extra step at full speed before the defensive players realize it's going to be a pass.

Not a bad little catch...

And even when the defense has figured that the play will be a passing play, they have to figure out where that wide receiver is going--will he/she run this way or that way? Will it be a short pass or a long pass? Offenses spend months practicing specific plays so that the receiver and the quarterback both know what is supposed to happen. Even then the skill needed in these two positions is remarkable. Professional quarterbacks are known to throw the ball to a moving target thirty yards away and to thread the ball through a narrow opening of players, right into a receiver's hands. Professional wide receivers often possess Olympic-level speed plus routinely dive head first, suspending themselves horizontally while snatching the ball with their fingertips.

If a team has a player who is extremely fast and can run right past the defense, and a quarterback who can throw the ball to that player, that team has an obvious huge advantage.

If that team also has good linemen and can successfully block for a runner, they are in really good shape.