I played both football and rugby. Played Club rugby in college. Rough tough fun sport. American football is more brutal. The pads are weapons. First thing you learn in rugby is to keep your head and hands out of any place they can get kicked or stepped on.
I could make a team of NFL linebackers, running backs, receivers and DBs and rule the rugby world. Team speed would be overwhelming.
Imagine lateraling the rugby ball to Herschel or Bo or Deion in their prime. Who’d catch them? If they caught them, what would they do with them? Saddle them up fir a ride??😂
It would be an interesting experiment. I played rugger as a young bloke, and thanks to an American teacher at high school we learned about the American version too. Apart from the helmets and pads and stuff, the big difference for me is that a good rugby game flows, and players might be going hard for more or less the whole of each half, perhaps with just the odd breather while a kick or lineout takes place. American football seems to be a few seconds of movement, and then everyone stops. You also have people who only get wheeled on for one job, where in rugger while everyone has their position everyone runs, everyone passes, everyone tackles, and you also may have to drop kick and punt. You also don't change teams just because the ball changed possession, and of course you have to run the ball forward, or kick and chase, there's no forward passing.
Without taking anything from your US footballers, I wonder how they'd go not only without the helmets and pads, but also with having to cope with all of that, and go hard across two 40 minute halves, back and forth. It is one thing to be fast, for example, but you're not worth much if you can't also tackle, pass and all the rest, and do it for the whole game.
