What Rugby Can Learn from American Football

It'd be nice to think that your chosen game was perfect, and that no others could hold a candle to it. That is unfortunately not true, so what we settle for is the best that we can find. So with a nod to the massive differences between the sports, here's where american football could take a few cues from rugby.

American Football is primarily a high powered, short burst game whereas rugby is much more a stamina based marathon. That is the fundamental difference between the games, but that doesn't mean they don't have things to teach each other so I'm going to go through a few points that rugby can take from american football and explain the benefits it could have to the game.

I’ve already covered the other side of this article here. This time I’m going to take a look at what aspects of the Yanks game can be transposed into rugby, and how it would benefit the sport.

Tackling

I covered this in the first article as well, but tackling is something that is taught differently for both games where both techniques are useful dependent on the situation. For every time I’ve seen Marshawn Lynch run through someone who doesn’t wrap up properly, I see a player like Bastereud who can keep pumping his legs and long step out of a simple leg wrap tackle.

Tackling is taught differently for each game, but it should be taught as two different styles within the same game. There is no single technique that will suit a game in it’s entirety.

Zone Defense

I originally recall the French national team trying out zonal defending in preparation for the 2007 World Cup but I don’t believe rugby has yet made full use of zonal defense. Most teams still adopt the single line defence, with one deep fullback. While some are moving to playing more often with 2 or 3 back (fullback and one or both wingers) there is still more scope for a two layers defense. This could take the form of a half blitz, with the traditional linebacker middle zone being around the line of the ruck.

Playcalling

As with the defencive side of play, there are a lot of cues that can be taken from gridiron with regards to attacking play. Too often in rugby the ball is tossed around aimlessly, and while the pace of the game prevents complex route running, and the mechanics prevent blocking there is a lot to be said for designed moves.

Just twenty years ago rugby was almost exclusively an amatuer sport, where it is now fully professional. With that dramatic change the gameplanning must keep up, no longer should pure atheticism be enough. Overlaps, miss passes and line switching can keep a team on its back heel. Not every stage of an attack can use planned plays, but there’s certainly space for playcalling where there currently isn’t enough.

Kicking

This one goes both ways too. American Football has a very simplistic kicking game, but it always occurs from within the regular structure of a play. Every kicking opportunity can be used to run a regular play. Rugby loses a lot of excitement around the set kicking for penalties. If these same penalties were not allowed to be set plays, but had to be taken from an uncontested scrum (as an example) there would be more scope for a fuller and more engaging game.

Right now, one of the main criticisms of rugby is that it’s becoming a slower game, being held up by these set plays far too often. Taking ideas from a game that is built on that stop-start gameplay doesn't seem intuitive but the kicking game in particular is an area in which rugby can improve itself fairly easily.

These are just a few of my own thoughts, and I’m sure you have your own. I’d love to hear any other ideas.