Contents
The Football Field
Scoring in Football
The Structure of a Football Game
The Football Game Clock
How to Break Down a Football Play
Football Offense
Football Defense
Special Teams
Football Officials and Penalties
The NFL
College Football
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Scoring in Football
The object of football is to score more points than the opposing team. There are five different ways to score points in football, each of which earns the scoring team anywhere from one to six points. All five methods involve either the end zones or goalposts.
How Teams Score in Football
Football players score points in four main ways:
- Touchdowns
- Points-after touchdown and two-point conversions
- Field goals
- Safeties
Touchdowns (6 points)
Touchdowns are worth six points and are the highest-scoring play in fooball. Because touchdowns are worth so many points, they’re the most important type of score, though it’s possible to win a game without scoring any touchdowns.
A team can score a touchdown in two ways:
- A player on the team carries the ball over the goal line and into the end zone.
- A player on the team catches a pass while standing in the end zone.
Points-After and Two-Point Conversions
After a team scores a touchdown, it has the chance to score additional points by going for either a point-after or two-point conversion.
- Point-after (1 point): The team that has just scored gets one chance to kick the ball between the uprights of the goalpost from a play starting on the two-yard line. If successful, the team scores an extra point.
- Two-point conversion (2 points): The team that has just scored gets one chance to try to carry or pass the ball into the end zone from the two-yard line. If the team is successful, it gets two points.
The odds of completing a point-after successfully are much higher than completing a two-point conversion successfully. For that reason, most teams go for the point-after following most touchdowns and go for the two-point conversions only when they absolutely need the additional point.
Field Goals (3 points)
A team scores a field goal by kicking the football between the uprights of goalposts. A team can attempt a field goal from any distance on the field. For instance, a team may attempt a field goal from the 10-yard line or from the 40-yard line. Though it’s considerably more difficult to kick a successful field goal from a longer distance (the longest field goal ever kicked was 63 yards), field goals are always worth just three points, regardless of distance.
Safeties (2 points)
A safety occurs when an offensive player carrying the football is tackled in the end zone that his team is defending, or steps on or across the end line or side lines of that end zone. When this happens, the team playing defense gets 2 points. Safeties are relatively uncommon and are the only way a team playing defense (and not in possession of the ball) can score points.
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