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11 Unwritten Rules of Football

Pass interference. Holding. False start. Offside.

These are well-known football rules found within in every rulebook.

There is another set of rules, however, that live outside of manuals but exist through experience and advice passed down through generations within the game, consisting of guidelines created by players within the sport.
Former Penn State football players Andy Ryland and Michael Haynes, both of whom now work at USA Football, offered their insight on football’s unwritten rules. Haynes, the 2002 Big-Ten Defensive Player of the Year, also played in the NFL as a first-round pick of the Chicago Bears.

Link to original article in USA Football by Gavin Porter.

“First off, unwritten rules are an eternal difference of opinion,” said Ryland, USA Football’s senior manager of training and curriculum. “I’m sure it would be different depending on who you asked and what side of the ball they played on. But there really are some things you just do.”

At the most levels of football, a majority of what was once considered dirty but legal has now been included in the rules.

“You can’t just nail a quarterback who was defending an interception,” Haynes said. “It is good that the game has created rules that remove ‘dirty plays’ from football.”

Here are 11 more unwritten rules that Haynes and Ryland shared that weren’t written down anywhere but everyone knew during practices and games:

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