Questions to Ask a Football Player
Twenty questions for talking with a football player, whether you are a fan, a classmate, a reporter, or a parent of someone starting out. They cover the parts of the job a broadcast does not show: how a playbook gets learned, what a hit feels like, what the film session is like after a bad game, and what comes after the last one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What position do you play, and how did you end up there rather than somewhere else?
Why ask it
Position changes are the hidden history of most football careers, usually caused by a growth spurt, somebody else's injury, or one coach's hunch. The story tends to explain why they play the way they do now.
What does your week look like when there is a game at the end of it?
Why ask it
Outsiders picture practice and a game. Players describe lifting, film, walk-throughs, treatment, meetings, and a day off nobody takes off. It is the quickest way to understand how much of the sport happens with nobody watching.
What do people watching never notice about your job on the field?
Why ask it
Every position has invisible work: a guard's first step, a safety disguising coverage, a receiver's assignment on a run play. Asking for it lets a player talk about craft rather than highlights, which most of them almost never get to do.
How much of a play is decided before the ball is snapped?
Why ask it
Answers range from nearly all of it to almost none, depending on position and level. Linemen and quarterbacks describe checklists; skill players describe reacting. The difference tells you what kind of thinking the job demands.
How do you actually learn a playbook?
Why ask it
You get something concrete: index cards, notes on a phone, walking through it alone in a bedroom, teaching it to a younger player. Hardly anyone says they simply memorize it, and the method is often what separates the second string from the third.
What is the first thing you look at once you line up?
Why ask it
The specifics are surprising, a linebacker watching a guard, a corner watching hips, a lineman counting bodies. It shows how much of football is pattern recognition rather than reflex, and it changes how you watch the next game.
Who is the hardest player you have lined up against, and what made them hard?
Why ask it
Naming someone forces a concrete description instead of a compliment. Listen for what they had to change to cope, because that is where players are most honest about their own limits.
What does a real hit feel like, and how long does it take to shake off?
Why ask it
Asked plainly, this gets a plain answer: which contact stings, which is not felt until the next morning, which one frightened them. Players usually distinguish between pain and damage, and that distinction is the interesting part.
What do you eat on the day of a game?
Why ask it
Game day eating is oddly precise and often superstition wearing nutrition's clothes. The answer also shows how much the player controls and how much the program dictates, which varies enormously by level.
What is going on in your head in the hour before kickoff?
Why ask it
That hour is when players are least like their public selves: silent, nauseous, joking, occasionally asleep. Asking about the hour rather than the moment gets you past the confident version of the answer.
What does the sideline sound like late in a close game?
Why ask it
Broadcasts flatten this completely. Expect a coordinator repeating one call, a position coach correcting footwork, an injured teammate shouting at nobody. It is one of the few things only somebody who has stood there can describe.
What is the film session like the day after you played badly?
Why ask it
This is where a player tells you how their program really handles mistakes: reviewed in front of everyone or one on one, named or unnamed, corrected or humiliated. It reveals more about culture than any question with the word culture in it.
Which teammate makes your job easier in a way nobody notices?
Why ask it
Credit in football follows whoever touched the ball. Asking about invisible help produces a specific name and a specific act, and players enjoy giving it, which tends to loosen the whole conversation.
What has being injured taught you about your own body?
Why ask it
Injuries teach players a surprising amount about anatomy, rehab, and how little some pain means. Keeping the question on their body rather than their comeback stops it turning into a triumph story.
Is there a play you still think about?
Why ask it
Almost every player has one snap on a loop, and it is rarely a famous one. What they pick, and whether it is a failure or a moment when the game slowed down, tells you the standard they hold themselves to.
What is something a coach asks of you that you quietly disagree with?
Why ask it
Asked with some care, this is not an invitation to attack a coach. Most players name a scheme preference, a rest issue, or a practice habit. A flat refusal to answer is itself information about the program.
What is the worst advice you were given as a young player?
Why ask it
Bad advice is far easier to discuss than good advice. Answers often involve playing through pain, gaining weight too fast, or dropping every other sport too early, and the regret attached is genuinely useful to somebody starting out.
How do you handle it when the crowd, or your own family, gets on you?
Why ask it
This reaches something rarely discussed: criticism from strangers is easier to carry than criticism from a parent in the stands. Expect a short answer first, then leave a pause rather than moving on.
Would you let your own kid play?
Why ask it
Answers vary widely and are worth taking at face value. Players tend to talk about the age of first contact, the quality of coaching available, and what they now know about their head and knees. Let them answer without steering them.
What do you want to be doing five years after your last game?
Why ask it
Careers end early at every level, and most players have thought about this more than they let on. Asking about after the last game rather than retirement produces something concrete: a trade, a degree, coaching, a business.
Getting a real conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you ask anything
- Know the level. A high school junior, a walk-on, and a professional have almost nothing in common in schedule, money, or medical care, and questions written for one sound foolish to another.
- Do not ask for facts you could have looked up. Stats, records, and scores burn goodwill fast. Ask about the things no box score holds.
- If they lost recently, leave the result alone for a day. Ask about craft instead, since a player will talk technique when they will not talk about a loss.
- Watch one of their games first if you can. A single specific observation, even a wrong one, moves you out of the category of people who ask the same four questions.
Injuries, contact, and head trauma
Ask in ordinary language and without drama, then accept whatever you get. Players deflect these questions for good reasons: a hint of vulnerability can move them down a depth chart, and some have not decided what they think yet. If someone changes the subject, do not return to it. Never press a player to characterize their own long-term risk, and do not treat the answer as a story about the sport rather than about them.
If you are writing something
- The usable quotes come from narrow questions. What do you look at when you line up will always produce more than talk about your mindset.
- Ask for a name and a moment. Players speak in generalities until you ask which teammate, which game, which play.
- Read anything sensitive back to them before you publish it, especially about injuries, coaches, or family. It costs you nothing and it is the reason players talk to some reporters twice.
- Do not build a story around the one line where they criticized a coach. It is the fastest way to lose access and to make life harder for the player.
Questions to skip
- Are you going pro. It is unanswerable, it puts them on the spot, and every stranger asks it.
- How much can you bench. It reduces the person to a number and tells you nothing about how they play.
- Comparisons to famous players. There is no good answer: agreeing sounds arrogant, disagreeing sounds falsely modest.
- Anything phrased as advice for kids on the first pass. Save it for late in the conversation, once they have been talking about their own experience rather than performing as a role model.