How to Cheat Your Way Through Super Bowl LI Without Knowing Anything About Football

The Super Bowl will take place on Sunday with the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots competing for the championship. If you don’t know anything about football or are just not doing well this year, we will give you the opportunity to chat with friends during the game or at work on Monday with discussion topics, betting tips and more.

First, let’s get into the details:

Super Bowl LI TV: Fox ( Fox Sports Go for streaming) Time: Starts at 3:00 PM ET, starts at 6:30 PM ET. Location : NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. Teams: New England Patriots (will be in white jerseys) vs. Atlanta Falcons (red jerseys)

A quick guide to the basics of football

You probably understand the basic rules of football, but if not, then the video above explains everything you need to know. However, every year the NFL goes around and changes the rules, and this year is no different.

The biggest change this year is for Starter Players, so you’ll hear about it the first time you play through the game. Initial strikes touchbacks now return to the 25-yard line instead of the 20-yard line. The implication of this change was to reduce the number of retaliatory strikes at the start, which in turn should reduce the number of collisions at full speed, which in turn would reduce the number of injuries. As it turned out, the change in the rules did not affect the injury rate. Kicks still came back about as often as touchbacks, only about two percent.

Otherwise, this year passed without significant changes to the rules. The slicing blocks that happen when one striker blocks a defender below the hip while another striker hits him above the waist, which is equivalent to a two-player move in WWF No Mercy 64 , are now more illegal than before. This intricate set of rules, but SBNation covers parts, if you are deeply passionate about the locks.

A test run last year to move the extra points back to the 15-yard line has become the rule. Despite being a year old, commentators are likely to talk about it every time they try to get extra points. There are a few more minor changes made to the 2016 rulebook and you can check them out on the NFL Ops website.

Learn the main themes of this year’s game

If you have a fleeting interest in football, then you probably didn’t bother digging through a lot of silly arguments, memes, and other nonsense this year. So let’s take a look at a few of the main themes to play this year:

• Deflategate, also known as Ballghazi : Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, was suspended four games early in the season for his role in blowing up soccer balls in a 2015 AFC championship match. The entire controversy is a long and silly plot that looks more like a bored ESPN writer trying to write a novel by John le Carré than reality, but you can find the entire timeline here if you’re interested.
• Falcons, players to watch out for : Matt Ryan, aka Ice, aka Matty Ice, Falcon Defender. You will hear a lot about him, especially considering that he has thrown 18 TDS without interceptions in the last six games. Julio Jones is the stellar successor on the team and unstoppable all year. Meanwhile, the Falcons are using a fugitive committee with Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman, both of whom are likely to be on the field frequently throughout the game.
• Behind the Patriotic Players : Tom Brady is the guy you’ll hear the most about. He’s a patriot advocate, a Donald Trump supporter, and supplier of BS’s unscientific hi-tech sleepwear that uses natural materials to supposedly help you recover from your workout. Brady has been as much maligned as he is loved, as has Patriots coach Bill Belichick . What may shock some is the fact that the Patriots have more players than Brady on the team, including UGG rep and occasional receiver Julian Edelman, up-and- coming receiver Chris Hogan, and Rob Gronkowski, replacing Martellus Bennett. Like the Falcons, the Patriots use a committee of runners, and you never know who will be on the field.
• Rookie vs. Veteran : The Atlanta Falcons advanced to the Super Bowl for the second time. The last time was in 1999, when they lost to the Denver Broncos (which coincidentally won last year). Only three Falcons players have ever been to the Super Bowl, while 23 Patriots have played in at least one Super Bowl. This is the ninth Patriots Super Bowl and the largest in NFL history. It is also head coach Bill Belichick’s seventh trip to the Super Bowl. So far they have won four.
• Rating : This game can be very rewarding as both the Patriots and the Falcons tend to score a lot. In fact, the Falcons are in the Super Bowl as the highest scoring attacker in the NFL, averaging 33.8 points per game. Even though the Patriots Defense came in first in terms of points allowed (which goes against the way it sounds, means they gave the least points), the Falcons are likely to score a few points.
• Silly Facts to Quit Mid-Game and Impress Friends: Patriots owner Robert Kraft began his career as a sports team owner back in the 70s with the lousy tennis team Boston Lobsters . The Falcons owner, Arthur Blank, was one of the three founders of Home Depot .

It will likely be a pretty straight forward game, and after last year ‘s defense – oriented game , it will be a little more interesting for an outside observer to watch it.

Know who the stars are

This year’s fun kicks off with three original Hamilton members performing America Fine. After that, Luke Brian, the country singer who has a song called ” Drink Beer, ” which might as well be the unofficial NFL anthem, will sing the real national anthem.

Lady Gaga will lead the show between halftime, marking her second Super Bowl appearance in so many years since she sang the national anthem last year. As usual, she remained silent on what would happen and if any special guests would be coming, but given the rumor that she wants to perform on the rooftop of the stadium , there’s a good chance this song will rivalKaty Perry’s insane Super Bowl 49. hiatus from the show , although I would have put my money on a more humble start than Perry’s.

Who to bet on

When it comes to investing in ridiculous parts of the Super Bowl, betting has long been as much a Super Bowl tradition as half-time shows. Right now the site Rates Oddshark puts Falcons as the winner 29,3-21,1 with a difference of three points.

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the boring bets, let’s take a look at the pivot bets because they are so much more fun. Props are bets on random events that happen during the game, and they get weirder every year. Some of them are basic, like who will score the first touch or who will be the most valuable player in the Super Bowl. Others are more bizarre. Here are a few odd ones, taken from Bovalda (PDF alert) , Oddshark, and Westgate Las Vegas (PDF alert) :

• How many times Trump will be mentioned during the stream : over / under is only 1 ½, which seems low considering how likely he is to tweet something during the game.
• Will it be said on TV during the game “Houston, we have a problem”: shocking, it’s 5/2 yes, 1/4 no. Personally, I give it a 100% chance.
• Will Microsoft tablet malfunction: Yes, 6/1. I bet Microsoft knows how important this is, so I’m sure they are prepared for any problems if they really arise.
• More / less time with the phrase “greatest of all time” uttered during the broadcast: I think this is a low 5.5, as I expect the commentator to say this about Brady at least 400 times.
• Chances of Lady Gaga having a snake on stage during a break from the show are 4/5 because why would Lady Gaga have a snake on stage?

Proportional bets are as random as they get, so have some fun and make a silly bet. You may also come across the Super Bowl Squares rate at your job or Super Bowl party, which is a 10×10 grid with numbers from zero to nine printed along the x and y axes . Each participant pays an entry fee and then puts their name in a box on the grid. At the end of each quarter, the square containing the last digit of each team’s score wins. So which squares are best? According to some Harvard students , zero, three, and seven are the best, and avoid two, five, and nine.

In this case, you must have everything you need to play. At the very least, throw ‘it was a ridiculous demonstration ‘ all over the place.

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