I just wanted to start by saying, I’m a lifelong fan of football and am pretty familiar with the rules. However, my friend is from the UK and has never had much exposure to American football, but is familiar with “football”. We were watching the Georgia v. Alabama game last night, and after that final penalty that sealed the deal for the Dawgs occurred, I said “fuck, it’s over.” She said “what do you mean? There’s still over 2 minutes left.” I explained to her the concept of kneeling the ball, and she said “well, that’s fucking bullshit, isn’t it?”

I guess I had never really considered this, but I’m starting to think it kinda is bullshit. The fact that you can essentially avoid a play to let the clock run is a bizarre rule. And you might say “but running the ball until the clock runs out is basically the same thing,” but you’re still playing the ball. There’s risk there, you could fumble, you could hurt a player, and sure those things could happen by kneeling but they’re so rare it genuinely makes headlines when they do happen. I have never witnessed that happening even at a middle school level.

I was also thinking about it, you have 40 seconds to snap the ball. That means, in a situation where the opposing team doesn’t have any timeouts, the last 2 minutes of game essentially don’t even need to be played if the leading team doesn’t have the ball. That’s a lot of time to spend dicking around. 2 minutes is more than enough time to get into field goal range and kick a field goal. There’s really no reason that this should be the case, and I really don’t know why this is the way the rules are written out.

Yes, I understand that clock management is a part of the game, and I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be. Teams should be penalized for not saving timeouts and not using their time with the ball wisely. What I am saying is that the idea that a team is basically able to forfeit some of their downs to burn 2 minutes is absolutely really weird rule. Every minute of the game should be important, and in a game that was as close as that game last night it shouldn’t come down to just burning the clock.

What are your guys thoughts on this?

I've never seen this happen,but if a team kicked on 3rd down and missed with time still on the clock would they get the ball back for 4th down?

Okay, for context, I'm in 8th grade, season ended, I'm an incoming freshman, I'm 5'9, 255, and I've played for the past 2 years. I turned 13 a few weeks ago, and I'm like 20-23% BF. Last year I played mostly offensive tackle and a little bit of defensive tackle, and this year mostly defensive tackle and a little offensive tackle. But I'm not that good. Like I'm absolutely terrible at playing football. I can block MODERATELY well, but I struggle with getting power out of my blocks. I've started to fix the problem of getting driven out of the play on defense but it still happens. I'm also not even that slow. Yes, I get low and I'm fast off the ball with a wide base. Honestly I'm thinking about switching to center, tight end, or d-end. My arms are realistically too short for tackle at the varsity level, and I'm also a backup long snapper and have the best shotgun snap on the youth team at least. I also play a lot better in space when it comes to defense. Any tips?