70 free Football Rules trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
65 free Football Rules trivia questions with answers. Everyone who watches football thinks they know the rules until a flag flies and the referee says something nobody expected. This quiz covers the rulebook of American football, mostly the NFL with the college differences that trip people up: how downs and scoring work, the field and the ball, the play clock and the two-minute warning, holding and pass interference yardage, the fair catch and the free kick after a safety, onside kicks and the 2024 dynamic kickoff, coaches' challenges, and overtime in the regular season, the playoffs and college. The easy questions ask what a touchdown is worth and how many downs you get. The hard ones want the hash-mark spacing, the ball's inflation range, the year the forward pass was legalized, which team voted to keep the tuck rule and where the only one-point safety in a major bowl game happened. Made for people who argue with the broadcast booth. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the rules of the game and the NFL's own rule pages, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many downs does the offense get to advance the ball 10 yards?
Four
Fail to make it and the ball goes over on downs, which is why fourth-down decisions are the game's most argued calls.
Q 02How many points is a touchdown worth?
6
The defunct World Football League was the outlier, paying seven for a touchdown.
Q 03How many points does a defense score for a safety?
2
It is the rarest of the standard scores, and the team that concedes it also has to kick the ball away afterward.
Q 04How many seconds does the NFL play clock give a team from the end of the previous play?
40
The NCAA runs the same 40-second clock; the shorter 25-second clock only appears after administrative stoppages.
Q 05What color flag does an NFL head coach throw to challenge a ruling on the field?
Red
The system arrived in 1999, and the flag must be thrown before the next snap.
Q 06How many timeouts does each NFL team get per half?
3
Unused ones do not roll over, which is why you see teams burn them at the end of the second quarter.
Q 07How does a punt returner signal that he wants a fair catch?
Waving one arm above his head
Once he signals, the ball is dead the moment he catches it and he may not advance it.
Q 08For a sideline catch to count in the NFL, how many feet must the receiver get down in bounds?
Two
College needs only one foot, which is why so many toe-tap catches get overturned when players reach the pros.
Q 09How many offensive players must be on the line of scrimmage at the snap?
7
The other four line up behind it, and only the two ends on the line plus the backs are eligible to catch a pass.
Q 10From which yard line does a normal NFL kickoff take place?
35
High school kicks from the 40, and the NFL kept its spot even when it rewrote the rest of the kickoff in 2024.
Q 11How far must an onside kick travel before the kicking team can legally recover it?
10 yards
Even a clean recovery ends the play: the kicking team may keep the ball but cannot advance it.
Q 12How long is a regular-season NFL overtime period, in minutes?
10
If it ends still tied, the game is a tie; only the playoffs keep adding periods until someone wins.
Q 13From which yard line does the NFL run a two-point conversion?
2
College and high school snap it from the 3, and NFL teams convert roughly half their attempts.
Q 14Which team calls the opening coin toss in the NFL?
Q 21Under the 2024 NFL rules, which of these was a condition for attempting an onside kick?
The kicking team had to be trailing
The kick also had to be declared to the officials, ending the surprise onside kick that had worked about 60 percent of the time.
Q 22After conceding a safety, from which yard line does the scored-upon team put the ball back in play?
Its own 20
The kick may be a punt, a drop kick or a place kick, and most teams punt it.
Q 23What happens if a quarterback commits intentional grounding while standing in his own end zone?
The defense is awarded a safety
The visitors
The toss happens three minutes before kickoff, and the winner usually defers so it gets the ball to start the second half.
Q 15In the NFL, where is the ball placed after defensive pass interference?
At the spot of the foul
That is why a deep-ball flag can move the offense 50 yards in one play; college enforcement is far gentler.
Q 16How many yards is offensive holding in the NFL?
10
Defensive holding is only 5 yards but hands the offense an automatic first down.
Q 17How many seconds is the NFL's shorter play clock after timeouts, penalties and turnovers?
25
The same shorter clock follows the two-minute warning, an extra point and any replay review.
Q 18How long is a standard NFL extra-point kick, in yards, since the 2015 rule change?
33
Moving the snap back 13 yards to the 15 turned the automatic point into a kick that misses a few dozen times a season.
Q 19In the 2025 season, where was the ball spotted after a touchback on an NFL kickoff?
Its own 35
The spot crept up from the 20 to the 25 to the 30 and then the 35 in 2025, each move designed to make kicking it deep less attractive than letting it be returned.
Q 20Under the NFL's 2024 dynamic kickoff, where do the kicking team's players other than the kicker line up?
Opponents' 40
Nobody may move until the ball hits the ground or a returner, which is why the old full-speed collisions disappeared.
The same fate awaits offensive holding in the end zone; any offensive foul back there is scored as a safety.
Q 24Intentional grounding costs the offense a loss of down plus how many yards from the line of scrimmage?
10
The throw only counts as grounding if the passer faces imminent loss of yardage and no receiver has a realistic chance at the ball.
Q 25What is the penalty for an ineligible receiver being downfield on a pass play?
5 yards
The lineman keeps the down for his team; the sting is that the completed pass comes back.
Q 26Which NFL jersey-number range is always ineligible to catch a pass unless the player reports as eligible?
50 to 79
That reporting rule is what allows an offensive tackle to line up as a tight end for one trick play.
Q 27In college football, defensive pass interference is capped at how many yards from the previous spot?
15
The pro version can cost 40 yards on the same play, which is why NFL cornerbacks are coached to grab early rather than late.
Q 28If defensive pass interference happens in the end zone, where does the NFL place the ball?
At the 1
It also comes with an automatic first down, so the offense gets four cracks at it from a yard out.
Q 29After the two-minute warning, an offensive foul that stops the clock triggers what extra consequence?
A 10-second runoff
The offense can avoid it by burning a timeout, if it still has one.
Q 30A runner slips and his knee touches the turf with no defender near him. Under which rules is he down?
NCAA only
In the NFL he can get up and keep running unless he was touched or gave himself up.