A down is a single play: one attempt to move the ball. The offense (the team with the ball) gets four downs to move it ten yards forward. Manage that, and they earn a fresh set of four and keep going. Fail, and they hand the ball to the other team. That four-downs cycle is the core of the whole game.
What is a down?
A down is one play, from the moment the ball is put in motion to the moment the whistle blows. That’s it. Not a period of the game, not a score, just a single attempt.
The word does double duty, which is half the confusion. A player is also “down” when they’re tackled and the play ends, and the commentator will say so. Same word, two uses: the down is the attempt, and a player goes down to end it. You get four attempts each time you start a fresh set, and I’ll explain what resets them below.
What “first and ten” means
“First and ten”, “second and six”, “third and long”: you’ll hear this on a loop, and it’s the first thing that makes a newcomer feel lost. It’s two pieces of information, not one.
The first number is which attempt you’re on. The second is how many yards you still need for a fresh set of four. So “first and ten” is first attempt, ten yards to go. “Third and two” is third attempt, two yards to go. If you thought you heard a commentator say “ninth down”, you almost certainly heard “third and nine”, which is third down with nine yards to go. There is no ninth down. There isn’t even a fifth. Four is the most you ever get.
Decoded takeaway: the first number is the attempt, the second is the yards still needed, and it only ever counts to four.
Moving the chains: how you earn a new first down
Reach that ten-yard line and the count resets: you get a brand new “first and ten” and four more downs to do it again. Commentators call this “moving the chains”, after the ten-yard chain officials use to measure it.
You don’t have to carry the ball all the way past the marker. The forward point of the ball is what counts, so a runner stopped with the nose of the ball a yard past the line has made it. One special case: when you get within ten yards of the goal line, there’s no room left for a ten-yard target, so the call becomes “first and goal”, and the goal line itself is the line to reach.
Cross that line and the whole thing resets: a new first down, four fresh goes, and the target moves ten yards further on.
Fourth down: punt, kick, or go for it
Here’s the decision the whole system builds to. It’s fourth down, you haven’t made your ten yards, and you have one attempt left. You have three choices, and this is where a lot of the drama lives.
- Punt. Kick the ball away to the other team on purpose, so they start further back. It looks like surrender and it’s usually the smart, safe play: better to hand it over deep in their half than fail on the spot and give it up where you’re standing.
- Kick a field goal. If you’re close enough, kick it through the posts for three points. What the points are worth lives on scoring.
- Go for it. Run one more play and try to make the yards. Succeed and you keep the ball with a fresh set. Fail and the other team takes over right there, which is called a turnover on downs.
Decoded takeaway: on fourth down you punt it away, kick for three, or gamble on one more play.
The bit that trips everyone up: four downs to gain, not to score
The single most common misunderstanding is what the four downs are for. Almost everyone new assumes you get four tries to score. You don’t. You get four tries to move ten yards, and making it just buys you four more.
| What people assume | What’s actually true |
|---|---|
| You get four downs to reach the end zone | You get four downs to gain ten yards |
| Fail to score in four and you lose the ball | Gain ten yards and you get a fresh four, as often as you can keep doing it |
| A drive is one set of four plays | A drive can run twelve, fifteen plays, resetting every ten yards |
| “First and ten” is a countdown to a score | “First and ten” just means a fresh set has started |
A team can march ninety yards down the field and never once face a scary fourth down, because every time they nudge past ten yards, the count starts over. That’s why a single possession can last for ten or more plays.
The four downs are a rolling ten-yard cycle, not a countdown to the end zone.
What the rulebook actually says
The plain-English version is not a simplification. It is the rulebook’s own wording, in stiffer language.
Rule 3, Section 8, Article 2 (Series of Downs). A series of downs is the four consecutive charged scrimmage downs allotted to the offensive team during which it must advance the ball to a yard line called “the line to gain” in order to retain possession.
Four goes to reach a target line, and reaching it keeps you the ball. “Charged” is the rulebook’s way of saying the down counted: a play wiped out by a penalty, or one where the ball changes hands, is not charged and does not use one of the four up. “Scrimmage down” means an ordinary play starting with the snap, as opposed to a kickoff.
Rule 3, Section 8, Article 3 (Line to Gain). The line to gain is the spot 10 yards in advance of the spot of the snap that starts a series, except when a goal line is less than 10 yards from this spot. In that case, the line to gain is the goal line.
The target sits ten yards ahead of where the set began. The exception covers the times you are already close to scoring: inside the opponent’s ten-yard line there is no room for a ten-yard target, so the goal line becomes the target instead. That is the moment a commentator stops saying “first and ten” and starts saying “first and goal”.
Rule 7, Section 3, Article 2 (New Series for Team B). A new series of four scrimmage downs is awarded to Team B when the following conditions exist: (a) Team A fails to advance the ball to the line to gain during a series of downs.
Team A is whoever has the ball, Team B is the other lot, which on this down means the defense. Miss the target across your four downs and Team B gets the ball, plus a fresh set of four of their own. The handover happens where the ball ended up, not back where the series started, which is why failing deep in your own half hurts so much.
Rule 7, Section 3, Article 3 (Forward Part of Ball). The forward part of the ball in its position when it is declared dead in the field of play shall be the determining point in measuring any distance gained or lost.
The nose of the ball decides it, not the player’s feet and not his body. A runner can be tackled with his feet short of the line and still have made it, so long as the tip of the ball is past the line when the whistle goes. It is also why so many of these calls come down to inches.
All four sit in the NFL’s official rulebook, published by NFL Football Operations. Strip the formal language away and they say the same thing the rest of this page does: four goes, ten yards, measured to the nose of the ball.
How the line to gain is measured now
For decades, a crew ran a ten-yard chain onto the field by hand whenever a first down was close. From the 2025 season, that changed. The NFL made Sony’s Hawk-Eye camera system the primary way to measure the line to gain, using six 8K cameras to track the ball, with the old chains kept on the sideline only as a backup.
Source: The league tested new technology to measure the line-to-gain in preseason, in 2024 before their full rollout of the system for the 2025 regular season, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/31/nfl-inches-closer-to-ending-chain-gangs-with-preseason-hawk-eye-trial
The change was about speed and accuracy. The camera measurement takes around thirty seconds against roughly seventy-five for the manual chains, and it followed a run of games where a hand measurement of a few inches decided the result. The NFL’s own announcement has the detail.
The rule itself has not changed at all. Only the way it gets measured has.
When downs decided a game: Belichick’s fourth-and-2
The best way to feel what a down is worth is to watch one go wrong. On 15 November 2009, the New England Patriots led the Indianapolis Colts 34-28 with about two minutes left, and faced fourth-and-2 on their own 28-yard line.
The safe call was to punt. Coach Bill Belichick went for it instead, backing his team to make two yards and end the game. Tom Brady’s pass to Kevin Faulk came up inches short of the line to gain, a turnover on downs, and the Colts took over near midfield. Peyton Manning scored the winner with thirteen seconds left, and Indianapolis won 35-34. It remains one of the most argued-over calls in the sport, and it’s the four-downs rule in a single moment: make the yards and you ice the game, miss by inches and you hand it over. The Associated Press match report covers the night.
Decoded Takeaway: fail to make your yards on fourth down and the other team takes the ball right where you left it.
Common questions about downs
How many downs are there in football?
Four. The offense gets four downs (four attempts) to move the ball ten yards. Reach the ten yards and the count resets to a fresh set of four. There is no fifth down.
What does “first and ten” mean?
First down, with ten yards to go for a new first down. The first number is which attempt you’re on; the second is the yards still needed. “Third and two” means third attempt, two yards to go.
What happens if you don’t get a first down?
If you use all four downs without gaining ten yards, you hand the ball to the other team at that spot. That’s a turnover on downs. It’s why teams usually punt on fourth down rather than risk giving the ball up in a bad position.
Why do teams punt on fourth down?
To trade the ball for field position. Rather than fail on fourth down and give the other team the ball where they’re standing, a team kicks it far downfield so their opponent starts further back. It looks like giving up, but it’s usually the percentage play.
Part of the NFL Rules guides. New to watching? Start with your first NFL game, decoded. For where a down sits in a drive, a game and a season, see how the NFL works. For more games settled by a single rule, read about the Tuck Rule game and the Holy Roller.