Football Terms, And How Not To Use Them

The NFL playoff season is underway, which for some people means weeks of tension and excitement, and for others, confusion and dismay. ("Oh nooo! My team made it to The Big Game, whichever one that is. I hope they score so many footballs that nobody realizes I have absolutely no idea what's going on.")

Well, don't fret. As long as you have a grasp of some football terminology, you can give the impression that you understand the rules of this weird, century-old game. Of course, lots of football words mean something completely different from what they seem to mean, so the first step is to avoid these perfectly logical but very wrong assumptions.

Term: Safety
Wrong Assumption: Oh, good. The guy with the ball has retreated to the safety of his end zone, where he is lying on his back to take a well-deserved rest.
Actual Meaning: The guy with the ball somehow got tackled in his own end zone, which is so unlikely and bad that it's akin to failing a test before you walk in the room, and then having national broadcasters laugh at you.

Term: Long Snapper
Wrong Assumption: Some variety of Alaskan trout.
Actual Meaning: A guy who inexplicably makes $500,000 a year to correctly throw a ball between his legs so that a different guy can kick it. You will only ever hear his name if he somehow fails to throw the ball between his legs.

Term: Hurry-Up Offense
Wrong Assumption: "Hurry up, offense!"
Actual Meaning: A strategy wherein the offense doesn't bother to talk in a huddle, just sort of hoping that all the players will figure out what they're supposed to do, and will not get lost on their way to where the football is happening.

Term: Fleaflicker
Wrong Assumption: A very fastidious quarterback who owns a mangy dog.
Actual Meaning: A play where the quarterback throws the ball back to some guy who is not a quarterback, then expects that guy to throw a sweet pass, even though that guy isn't a quarterback, and at Football School he only majored in Running Super-Fast.

Term: Fantasy Football
Wrong Assumption: Some kind of really fun football game, with, um, dragons, and elves, and flying elves, and um...
Actual Meaning: Football nerds reciting statistics, over and over, for all eternity.

Term: Bootleg
Wrong Assumption: The quarterback is selling third-rate pirated DVDs out of the trunk of his car.
Actual Meaning: The quarterback fakes a play one way but then goes the other way, sort of like when you're approaching someone in the hall but neither of you knows which way the other means to go, and you fake left and then fake right and wind up bumping into each other and falling down and looking like idiots, which is actually how this kind of play usually turns out.

Term: Naked Bootleg
Wrong Assumption: The above, but the quarterback is naked.
Actual Meaning: The above, but with nobody protecting the quarterback, possibly because they just got in a big fight and are not on speaking terms.

Term: The Box
Wrong Assumption: A place the quarterback gets sent if he is bad.
Actual Meaning: A place the quarterback will usually be if he is good.

Term: Man Coverage
Wrong Assumption: We're not really sure, but it sounds sort of unseemly, like some kind of recurring Cosmo feature. "This month in Cosmopolitan's 'Man Coverage...'"
Actual Meaning: The defenders will match up one-on-one against the receivers, and hopefully none of them will be really slow and old.

Term: Nickelback
Wrong Assumption: A Canadian band people like for some reason.
Actual Meaning: A football guy who is fast.

What's your favorite football word?

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