An Idiot's Guide to Being the Smartest NFL Fan in the Living Room

Now a well-stitched fabric in the world of the American sports fan, the living room or local watering hole on NFL Sundays is more than just a hub to share hours of NFL action.

It’s a forum that gives you a chance to sound like most well-versed sports fan around—or come across as a complete phony who is just getting into the most popular sport in America.

Whether you are new to the sport or want to take your football-watching game to the next level, this guide will make you sound like a Bill Walsh disciple in no time.

The path to being anointed as the football guru of your social circle is not as simple as it once was. Thanks to fantasy football and nonstop sports talk, the average fan is more knowledgeable than ever, able to name players on all 32 teams.

If you want to be the smartest fan in the room, you’re going to have to bring a unique level of knowledge to the table.

 

Get Away From Basic Stats

Anyone with internet access can look up basic numbers such as Peyton Manning’s touchdown totals—heck, you can just ask Siri for such mindless information.

If you really want to stand out as the football wizard of the room, you need to dig deeper than baseline stats that even a well-trained monkey can find with a Google search.

Get yourself a subscription to an advanced metrics website such as ProFootballFocus.com to get an idea as to just as how well your players are playing between SportsCenter highlights. After all, NFL teams use sites like PFF for their own research (be sure to note that when referencing their stats).

Despite the monetary investment (usually less than $30 per year), you will learn a ton about how players are performing on a week-to-week basis from diligent film study from top experts in the industry.

These sites provide a grading scale for every player who steps foot on an NFL field. You can get a look into which offensive and defensive lines are playing well or which safeties need to be benched on all 32 teams in the NFL.

These sites essentially take hours upon hours of diligent film study of every player in every game, and condense it into a color-coded number that you can refer to at any time.

When you dive into these advanced statistics, you will be surprised as to how many stars are outperformed by guys you may not have even heard of. If you see a no-name rising the PFF rankings, be sure to make a note of it next Sunday—and watch as you hand-picked player blossoms into stardom.

You hardly have to know anything about football to understand PFF’s ranking system—it’s all color-coded and organized by either position or team. All you have to do is a little memorization to get the knowledge of a well-trained pro scout.

Use Fancy Scouting Buzzwords

If you want to sound like someone who knows the game inside and out, you’re going to have to start using the terminology used by those who work in the league.

First, ditch anything associated with being a “winner” or someone having “it.” Those terms are reserved for “analysts” who are too lazy to actually back up an argument with tangible facts. These buzzwords are used as a crutch to fall back on when they run out of stuff to say, and because talk-show kings such as Skip Bayless use them enough, such baseless arguments become accepted as indisputable fact.

Don’t be one of these people.

Instead, try using the words real coaches and scouts use when they are discussing players—you’ll sound smarter because these will actually provide substance to your arguments.

Here is a short list of words to become accustomed to when crafting your thoughts (insert "dude" whenever necessary):

• Words to describe athleticism (“balance,” “coordination,” “agility”).
  • Example: “Adrian Peterson showed great balance on that last run [dude].”
• “Leverage”—how a lineman gets underneath pads and drives an opponent away.
  • Example: “Man, its crazy how much leverage Vince Wilfork gets on every play.”
• “Ball skills” —catching and handling the football.
  • Example: “No one talks about how good Darrelle Revis’ ball skills are.”
• “Catching radius”—how far a receiver can reach to catch a football.
  • “Megatron’s catching radius is so valuable in the red zone.”
• “Pocket presence”—a quarterback’s ability to sense pressure in the pocket.
  • Example: “[Dude] what great pocket presence by Tom Brady on that throw.”

What do these terms do? They are a much more precise, calculated way of describing what you see so you won’t have to revert to that “winner” nonsense. You'll sound and feel smarter by just switching out a few nouns from your football vernacular.

Learn Position and Formation Terminology

Every somewhat-knowledgeable fan can name the basic positions such as wide receiver or defensive end, but there is a whole language of complex ways to say simple things that can make you sound like a coach.

Throughout your football-watching career, you may have been confused as to some of the crisscrossing defensive terminology when talking about different positions. This table should help clear things up:

Official Term	Casual Term	Modern Example
5-technique	3-4 defensive end	Muhammad Wilkerson (Jets)
3-technique	4-3 defensive tackle	Gerald McCoy (Bucs)
SAM linebacker	Strong-side outside linebacker	Von Miller (Broncos)
MIKE linebacker	Middle linebacker	D.J. Williams (Bears)
WILL Linebacker	Weak-side linebacker	Vontaze Burfict (Bengals)

The terms “3-technique” and “5-technique” are derived from which gap the defender lines up in. The “0-technique” is right over the center, and the numbers go up as the defender moves to the outside. For example, a “3-technique” lines up between a guard and a tackle, the third position over from the nose.

You can sound like a football brainiac when your team is on offense, too. Here is an easy way to call out your team’s formation just like the coordinators do on the sidelines:

1. Count the number of tight ends in the formation.
2. Count the number of running backs (including fullbacks and H-backs).
3. Put the two numbers together (tight ends first).
4. Say the number combination as if it were one number.

For example, if a team comes out with two tight ends and one running back, the offense is in “21 personnel.”

Now, you can understand what this tweet actually means:

This system is just a fast way for coaches to decipher personnel—when you subtract the tight ends and running backs from 5 (since six of the 11 players automatically count for five offensive lineman and a quarterback), you can derive the number of receivers on the field).

This is a very easy way to sound like a coach with your fine-tuned second-grade math skills.

Brush Up on Your Draft Knowledge

The draft is one of the fastest-growing aspects of the league in terms of popularity, and you can’t be a self-anointed expert without at least having a general sense of some of the top players in the college ranks.

You don’t need to do detailed film study to impress your buds with draft knowledge (although it certainly would do the trick). All you need to do is get a rough sense of the first-round prospects in terms of what kind of players they are and what schools they come from.

Memorizing 40 times (although impressive) is not needed here. Just learn essentially a tweet's worth (140 characters) of information about some of the more popular picks, and you're set.

Plus, if you put in some work getting ready for the draft in the offseason, before you know it, you will have a good knowledge base of many of the star players in the NFL that you can refer to.

After all, there are already dozens of well-trained media scouts putting out great free content all over the web. Just try to soak up as much as you can to sound smart on draft day and beyond.

This area of study takes some time, as you won’t be a draft expert after reading just a few articles or listening to a few podcasts—but putting in the effort in the offseason will translate to NFL Sundays.

Here is a quick review of what you need to do before now and Week 1:

• Stop using words like “winner.”
• Learn scouting buzzwords.
• Use advanced stats to learn about the players not on fantasy football rosters.
• Become familiar with fancy positional and formational terms.
• Dig into some of the top draft prospects every year.

Becoming a living room NFL expert is not as easy as it used to be—but there are rewards to be reaped if you are willing to put in just a little bit of extra work to learn these fancy terms and buzzwords.

After spewing out this knowledge, your friends will respect you as the top football mind in the room—as long as you too are not smug about your newfound expertise.