My fun, fascinating and just plain weird facts of the game:

This time, I have two, both dealing with the insane rules of the NFL.

1. Apparently “roughing the kicker” is a big no-no. And fans get really irate about it! Especially when you tell them that kickers are wusses and should get tackled just like everyone else (I mean, come on, the guy is playing football! A game who’s sole purpose is to beat the crap out of the other guy. Can’t handle it? Go play baseball.), No one is allowed to touch the little guy that kicks the ball during punts and field goals, after the ball is kicked because he is unprotected and a “a rare breed. I he’s already kicked the ball down the field, there’s no need to rough him.” I will have to think more about this.

I apologize that the video quality isn’t great. It’s the only one I could find because there were far more impotant things to play over and over and over again on the highlight reels

2. Encroachment. Sigh. Yeah. According to wikipedia that is “Encroachment is when a defensive player enters the neutral zone and by his movment makes an offensive player jump.” Um….. okay. I looked more into this strange penatly and found that if the defensive player crosses over the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped and touches the offensive player, it is a penalty. The way I interpret that: defensive guy can go up to the offensive guy with his fingers outstretched and say “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you” and then as soon as the ball is snapped, smash his body full force into him. Makes total sense.

About the author: Jennifer Taglione is the owner of this fabulous website Stiletto Sports. Despite writing well over 500 posts, she still maintains that she is not a sports writer! She is however a huge fan of Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, Mark Sanchez, the Celtics, and totally kicks butt on March Madness brackets! Connect with her by following her on Twitter @StilettoSportsJ and subscribing to her weekly newsletter. For more info check out the About the Editor page!

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