By The Athletic NFL Staff<\/p>\n
Feb. 8, 2026 4:00 am EST<\/p>\n
Football seems like a simple game. You score more points than the opposition, you win.<\/p>\n
But, it\u2019s so much more complicated than that. There are a lot of positions and among all of the jargon, it can be hard to know what player does what.<\/p>\n
Football positions are split into three groups: offense, defense and special teams. While they each work together toward the same goal, their roles couldn\u2019t be more different. Even within the groups, you\u2019d be surprised at how two positions serve completely opposite purposes.<\/p>\n
For example, quarterbacks receive the ball from the center and can either hand off the ball to a running back, throw it to a wide receiver or run it themselves. Yet the offensive linemen, who are part of the same group, focus on protecting the quarterback and creating spaces for the running back to go through. They\u2019re not trying to get the ball at all, yet they\u2019re considered offense.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty more to unpack. Watch the above video from the Tifo team for more.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Feb 8, 2026<\/p>\n
Connections: Sports Edition<\/p>\n
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms<\/p>\n
Find the hidden link between sports terms<\/p>\n
Play today’s puzzle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Athletic NFL Staff Feb. 8, 2026 4:00 am EST Football seems like a simple game. You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-466325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}