What American Football Can Learn from the Rugby World Cup

Once upon a time, American football and rugby were pretty much one and the same. Then came Walter Camp and the 1880 college football rules convention that replaced scrums with an uncontested line of scrimmage, and a subsequent century of increasing delineation and mutual indifference: hard plastic helmets and the domestic dominance of Monday Night Football on one side; "Give Blood, Play Rugby" T-shirts and international appeal on the other.

Still, football and rugby aren't that different. Both sports require speed, strength, and guile. Both involve large men moving an oblong ball across a field, clobbering each other along the way. The Rugby World Cup wraps up on Saturday in London with a final between New Zealand and Australia. Meanwhile, across the pond, American football is paying more attention to its predecessor than ever before, as teams in college and the NFL mine rugby for players and ideas in the ongoing quest for that all-important competitive edge.

What can football learn from rugby?

In 2014, the Seattle Seahawks released a video explaining a wrap tackling method: come see the Legion of Boom show why they were one of the NFL's top units three years running! Spliced into drills and examples is footage of rugby union tackles that demonstrate just how closely the Seahawks emulate the techniques of the older game.

When the Seahawks were developing their system, they sought the assistance of retired rugby player Waisale Serevi, arguably the greatest to ever play the sevens format of the game. He runs a Seattle-based high-performance rugby company called ATAVUS.

"They were initially interested in learning about the difference between rugby and football tackling, particularly around how effective and safe tackling is in our sport," Serevi told VICE Sports in an email. "At that time, the concussion issue was coming up in national media and as always Coach Carroll wanted to be of the forefront of the game and take the issue forward."

Rugby-style tackles emphasize using one's shoulders and wrapping up opponents, in part because rugby players don't wear helmets and can't use their heads as weapons. Some believe that this reduces the number of head impacts athletes endure, though there's no concrete evidence to support this claim. Last month, in a BBC investigation of the link between rugby and brain injuries, World Rugby's chief medical officer suggested changes to tackling rules could reduce the risk; earlier this year, English rugby's annual injury audit found that the number of reported concussions rose by 59 percent in 2013-14 (officials attributed much of that to the increased awareness on the part of players and teams about the dangers of head injuries).

ATAVUS announced in September that it has partnered with the Washington Huskies and the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes to teach its philosophy of rugby-style tackling. Whether or not it's safer, Seattle's defensive success has made the technique appealing to other football teams.

"When someone's repeatedly beating you, you have to stop and take notice," said Rex Norris, the head of football at ATAVUS, who has 23 years experience coaching rugby and football at all levels. "When the best teams are making those choices to make changes, the other teams are going to have to stop and pay attention. It's just not by chance."

When South African rugby player Naas Botha traveled to America to try his hand as a NFL placekicker in 1983, teams weren't willing to take a chance on him. Compared to their scouting reports on college and veteran pro kickers, there simply wasn't enough information about Botha.

That barrier has fallen. Increasingly, football teams are looking to rugby for players. Hayden Smith, who played at lock for the U.S. team at the Rugby World Cup, took two seasons off from his rugby career to play for the New York Jets. A former college basketball player who grew up playing rugby in Australia, Smith said that the Jets saw his talent in both sports and figured he could become a big tight end with good hands.

Similarly, the Indianapolis Colts signed former South African rugby pro Daniel Adongo in 2013 to play outside linebacker. While injuries and inexperience have limited Adongo to just two NFL starts, he's still considered a promising prospect.

Jarryd Hayne, a two-time player of the year in Australia's main rugby league, joined the San Francisco 49ers in March, turning down interest from the Seahawks and the Detroit Lions. Playing as a running back and a kick-returner, Hayne fumbled his first regular season catch, but showed his potency with a 37-yard punt return to set up the 49ers only touchdown in a 47-7 loss to the Cardinals.

While playing rugby, Hayne didn't have the luxury of teammate blocking for him. Instead, he had to quickly assess the positioning of the opponents ahead of him and try to make them miss, all on his own.

"Jarryd kind of does his things where he's being quite instinctual, which has been a bit of an eye opener for a lot of people in the NFL," Smith said. "I've heard there's been some commentary saying that's a little bit of a lost art of people trying to feel out the return rather than read different reads and trying the get behind blocks."

Beyond the use of helmets and body armor, the biggest difference between rugby and football involves in-game decision-making. In football, frequent play stoppages afford coaches the opportunity to regroup and dictate what their teams do during the next play.

In rugby, play remains live after ballcarriers go to the ground. Rugby coaches can scheme like Bill Belichick before a match, but once the game begins, they are much more spectators than their football counterparts.

"The game of football is coach-centric and rugby is more player-centric," Norris said. "As a football coach I love being able to be strategic and to play that chess match with the athletes we have. I love that piece of it. As a rugby coach, I love practice, I love watching the kids play, I love watching them get those aha moments."

According to Norris, the trend toward no-huddle offenses and shortening the time between plays in football makes players who are capable of rugby-style decision-making more valuable. "Football is becoming more and more like the flow of rugby, in the sense there's a lot more open field situations where the players going have to be just as effective as they are dominant in the tackle," he said.

Some college teams have followed the NFL's lead. This season, Cal asked Harry Adolphus, who played on the school's rugby team, to punt. Former Scottish schoolboy rugby champion Jamie Gillan employs a rugby-style kicking action for Arkansas. Check any Polynesian player's bio page, and it's a safe bet that there's some rugby in his background.

Even Blake O'Neill, the now infamous Michigan punter, credits his instincts from playing Aussie Rules football—where kicking is a method of passing—for the blown final play that led to his team's shocking 27-23 loss to Michigan State earlier this year.

Forward passing is illegal in rugby, and so ball movement in the sport is completely different from football. Still, some rugby experts believe that football could benefit by better utilizing the one pass both sports have in common: the lateral.

"I think if you start thinking a little bit outside the box, a little bit more creatively—I know it's high risk—I still think you can get away and get more TDs with a little bit of a creative passing game," said Botha, now a rugby television analyst.

"It's underutilized if you don't practice it," Norris said. "If rugby concepts were being taught every day, then I think it could be a very powerful tool in the United States in football. The difficulty in that is there's not a lot of football coaches that would even know how to go about teaching that."

Kevin Kelley, the high school coach at the Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, always onside kicks, rarely punts, and always goes for two. This season, he's incorporated plays that give players more chances to use the lateral pass. He says he was inspired by rugby.

Kelley's players use laterals two or three times a game. The results? Positive yardage, a touchdown run in by an offensive tackle, and no fumbles. The team is 8-0. It's hardly a big enough data set to make definitive conclusions, but early results are promising.

"It's given the other team something to think about, giving us the possibility of a longer play," Kelley said. "Put those two things together, along with the fact that we haven't turned the ball over or even put in on the ground yet for a fumble, then it's well worth continuing on and trying to get better at it."

Kelley says he actually calls for more laterals than his players have been willing to carry out, largely out of fear of fumbling the ball.

"They've been hit all their lives with 'don't fumble the ball, don't fumble the ball, don't fumble the ball.' So they're conservative anyways about it," Kelley said. "Second, I've got guys that are so used to, when another guy has the ball, they go block for them. Now instead of blocking for them they're supposed to run and get behind them. They're just not used to it and it's tough to give up there."

In August, the Financial Times reported that Michael Clement, chief executive of the National Rugby Football League, plans to launch an American professional league by 2017. The aim is to have six to 12 teams and capitalize on the period between January and September when football fans are itching for some televised body crashing.

A dubious business proposition? Possibly. America is hardly a power on the world rugby stage—Team USA lost all four of its games at the World Cup this year, including a 64-0 defeat to South Africa that tied the all-time try (the equivalent of a touchdown) scoring record in the tournament—and the sport lags far behind football here in terms of popularity and cultural relevance.

On the other hand, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association reports that rugby is the fastest growing sport in America based on participation. So maybe there's an untapped market to be developed and exploited.

"If rugby can become one of the top six [American sports], because of the right money and whatever, I think it will not take very long for Americans to take over world rugby," Botha said. "Yes you need little bit of a history, but you've got the sports people in America in any case."

Someday, perhaps, Americans will be asking what rugby can learn from football. John McFarland, defense coach for the South African national team, said that his players watch football videos for inspiration. (Ben Watson's full-field run to stop Champ Bailey scoring on a 101-yard interception in the 2005 AFC playoff is a personal favorite.) The team also brought in a former Minnesota Vikings kicker to show different kicking techniques and help the side encourage its wings and full backs to go up for the ball like wide receivers would.

"There's tackling techniques, front-on tackles, front-on blocking, sort of chest tackling techniques that come out of American football as well," McFarland said.

For now, it might be fun to watch the Rugby World Cup final—and future matches—with an eye on how the action can translate to football. Your favorite team would be stupid not to.