So watching college football today the announcers always make a statement like “That drive took 10 minutes so the defense got a good rest”. How is that rest only beneficial to the defense and not for the opposing offense?
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A very simple way of putting it is this:
If you put X effort into trying to do something, it generally requires more than X effort to stop you.
Defense simply has a higher energy requirement, and thus benefits more from rest.
In American football, the offense knows where it is going and what is going to happen, so they know where they are going to act, the defence has to react to what the offense is doing. In general it is more tiring to react than act.
Offense dictates tempo, bc they snap the ball. You never see the defense in “hurry up”. They are setting they’re defensive calls based on what the offense is doing. It’s why you get unbalanced teams, (read: great offense/bad defense) lose.
I could list quite a few teams, but if you can’t run the ball, your Defense suffers.
You’re not wrong, in the sense anytime you’re not in the field, you’re “resting”. But offense sets the tempo.
Part of the premise of your question is incorrect. 10 min of rest of beneficial for both teams, it’s MORE beneficial for the defense for the reasons that have been listed.
This is also interesting to me because typically the players on the offensive line do not rotate on a per snap basis but defensive line players can.
I could be misreading your question, but I believe in your case, the announcers were referring to the defense *of the same team of that offense that was out there for 10 minutes*.
As others have said, playing defense in football is exhausting because you’re constantly having the react at full speed and power.
So, if Team A’s offense is out there for 10 minutes (practically an eternity in football), then at the same time Team A’s defense is resting for a long 10 minutes to catch their breath and get fresh, while Team B’s defense is out there defending for a long 10 minutes, getting exhausted (and probably even more so if Team A’s offense is running the ball…that especially exhausts a defense because it’s usually man vs man physical battles).
Hopefully I answered it and didn’t repeat anyone and/or misunderstand you.
A couple of other points:
1 – the offense usually has a more rigorous conditioning program
2 – the Dlinemen are actively trying to get around or through the Olinemen so they have to work harder and will tire sooner unless rotated. You typically don’t rotate Olinemen.
People have, rightly, pointed out that the defense exerts more energy than the offense. But a major piece that I don’t see being mentioned is that when players get tired, they sub out. That happens on offense and defense. But the one player who almost never comes out is the quarterback. The (usually) most important player. So that alone makes rest more important for the defense than the offense.
Ops comment has nothing to do with any of the answers you are giving. The 10 min drive where the offense had the ball means that that teams defense is sitting on the bench resting because their offense is on the field
You guys are making this a lot harder than it should be
The offense gets to dictate the pace. If the offense wants to play quickly, it’s up to the defense to keep up with that. If the offense needs to take extra rest, they can use up more clock to do so.
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