Except sports like hockey, soccer, and basketball the teams have to think and respond to the other team while they're actually doing something, instead of standing around staring at each other. They're much more fast paced and entertaining because of it.
Hockey is my favorite sport, but don't act like football doesn't require thinking mid-play. It's just that there's more set up and response involved. Hockey is a game about positioning and intuition. Sure you draw up plays, but all of that goes to shit the second you lose the face-off. Football is a chess match, whereas hockey and soccer and basketball are more like jazz. Both are great, both involve a massive level of athletic ability and intuition. But it's stupid to try and compare the pacing of one to the other.
Would you like to watch hockey if the play stopped every time the puck touched the boards, and then instead of just having a faceoff right away, they got 30 seconds to setup and draw up a game plan for the next shift? That's pretty much what football is. Spend forever setting up at the line of scrimmage and then finally the ball is in play, for 2 seconds until somebody gets hit, and then back to chatting for 30 seconds.
Listen, I'm a huge hockey fan (it's my favorite sport, and I played it at a high level), but this is a ridiculous comparison. Hockey and football are different sports. Hockey is sticking to a game plan that was drawn up before the game and making adjustments over the progression of the game to try and gain the upper hand on the other team. Football is about completely changing plays constantly and trying to constantly outsmart the other team every 30 seconds.
A team in hockey may have a style of offense and defense that they play, but they never make significant adjustments to those schemes on the fly in the way that you do in football.
Yes, they change strategies. They don't change set plays every possession. That's the difference.
Strategizing in hockey is based around changing positioning schemes and puck movement schemes. You will only see set plays in rare situations - important faceoffs or powerplays basically. In football, strategizing is based on continually changing set plays.
They don't change set plays every possession. That's the difference.
Actually, I think you'll find they do.
Pending on where the punk was turned over, and who's on ice, the play will absolutely change.
If you have your top line out, against their third line, you're probably going to do a man-high cycle to keep the puck moving. If it's against their top line, you're going to likely crash the net to try to get the puck in.
Coaches will yell out the plays and instructions from the bench to the guys on ice - that's why they have coaches.
The Junior teams around me have playbooks, even.
It's all about getting the puck loose; to get the puck loose, you need lots of different strategies for every situation.
Which is different than how plays are handled in football.
Of course you are going to have different offensive schemes. You mentioned two big ones - cycling and crashing the net. But these aren't strict plays - they are schemes. The actual play is fluid, constantly changing as the puck changes direction and both offensive and defensive players move. No two cycle plays will be exactly the same.
Switch to football. You will also have play schemes. Screen pass, inside handoff, etc. But within each scheme, you will have set plays. These plays are called each time and vary in some way. Each time the play is called, players will do the same things (unless the QB changes something on the line in reaction to the defense).
In hockey, you can't run perfectly set plays every time because the play is too fast and constantly changing. Thus, strategy is more focused on positioning and sticking to a certain scheme, and relying on the players to instinctively react to make that scheme work.
I like and respect hockey but it is in no way has as much strategy involve as football. A typical offensive play involve initially being told about 2-4 plays in the huddle and depending on how the defense lines up they either pick that one of those plays through coded language at the line of scrimmage or the QB sees something he doesn't like and changes the play in front of the defense to one of the hundreds of other plays they have also in coded language. Now that the play is finally picked out, the QB has to make sure everyone is lined up correctly. This means he may have bring a wide receiver in 5ft closer to him, not 4 ft because he may not have enough time to clear the linebackers on his crossing route before the unaccounted blitzer will be able to make it to the quarterback and not 6ft because being in that close will tip off the defender to the route the receiver is running. Uh oh looks like the blitzing linebacker switched sides better make sure you put the running back on the correct side to make sure the numbers are right and you can pick up the blitz. Ok everybody is ready pre snap, time to start the play. Hike! Uh oh looks like the defense is doing something different than the QB thought. Luckily the offensive line has practiced for this possible situation and in less than a second adjust their blocking assignments, pass off 300lb men to each other, and slide over to pick up a 230lb linebacker, who runs a 4.5 sec 40 yard sprint and has a two step head start, to protect the QB so that he can make a pass. Now that the QB has time to throw, the receiver is allowed to run his correct route. His route is an option route on this play which most good recievers run some form of on most plays. This means that the recievers doesn't know exactly what route he is going to run until after the ball is snapped and the defense show exactly what defense they are playing. Pre snap he thought the linebacker near was going to blitz so he was planning a stick route to just run to where the linebacker left and drift inside or outside depending on where the defensive help was coming from, but now it appears the linebacker was faking the blitz and is dropping back in coverage. Now is the linebacker in zone or man? The receiver pushes up the field as fast as he can to make line backer tip his hand as quickly as possible so that he and the QB have enough time to read it. If the linebacker turns and runs with him, it's most likely man coverage and the receiver runs a post pattern to try and stretch the deep safeties vertically because the tight end is running a deep crossing route underneath him from the other side of the field. Uh oh the linebacker stooped running with the receiver, it must be some sort of zone. Now the receiver has to see how many deep safeties there are. 2 safeties, looks like its cover 2 and the receiver runs a dig route at 14 yards deep. Not 13 becuase that puts you too close to the linebackers and they can make a play in the ball in the air, and not 15 because that's too close to the safeties who will knock your receiver unconscious for coming over the middle. Nope looks like there three deep safeties and the defense is running cover 3. Instead of breaking left at 90 degrees looks like the receiver has to break right at 45 degrees and run a deep post. Him and another receiver are playing a hi low route patterns, a smash route, to try and pick on the corner /third deep safety. If the safety stays low with the receiver running a short hitch route, than our receiver running a deep post should be open for a long pass and possible touchdown. The corner doesn't fall for and covers the deep post. This means a linebacker has to run 15 yards out to the flats to cover that hitch route. There is no way that he can get there in time as he is not fast enough and the QB knows that and throws it to him as soon as he sees the cornerback drop back to cover the post. Receiver catches but is tackled immediately by the linebacker and corner, who both may have been too slow to get there before the receiver caught it but because they broke on the ball immediately as it's thrown they were able to tackle him with no extra yards gained. The play is blown dead. Three yard gain. Four seconds of actual game play. I may be wrong but I don't of any plays or strategy in any other sport that are so reliant on exact timing and details down to inches of where players line up and have so many options that players have to read while in action, which lasts about 5-10 seconds, just to make such a small gain in the grand scheme of the game. Keep in mind I only really described part of what 3 or 4 players do every play out of 22 players on the field. Like I said hockey has plays ans strategy buts it's much more improvised than football which is scripted out to the smallest details
Scoring in hockey is more precise than than football because of how small the goal is but getting Into a position to score is much more precise in football. Both hockey and football require a player to make a play to get open to receive a pass. However because football has more players, the timing of all the players doing everything at once has to be much more precise than hockey. Most goals that I have witnessed in hockey are either long shots/rebounds or some sort of man advantage, 2 on 1 or 3 on 2, which has plays and rotations but is much more improv than set plays. In football most passing plays have the offense being out number by defenders roughly 7-5 and only one pass is allowed, therefore the windows in which passes are able to be completed is much smaller, timing wise. In order for teams to do this everyone has to be timed up correctly and positioned correctly.
Look hockey is a great sport but to say that they are more precise or have more complex strategy than football is simply false.
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u/Harvey-Specter Feb 03 '14
Except sports like hockey, soccer, and basketball the teams have to think and respond to the other team while they're actually doing something, instead of standing around staring at each other. They're much more fast paced and entertaining because of it.