The Top 5 Things To Avoid Doing During Thanksgiving Flag Football

There's nothing like family
football on Thanksgiving.

A popular Thanksgiving for many families in America is the traditional family football game. Some families organize an actual game, others just toss the pigskin around, but because it is the game of football sometimes things get a little out of control. It’s important to remember you’re playing with family and Thanksgiving is all about enjoying family, not destroying it. Here are the top 5 things to avoid doing during your family’s flag football game:

5. Horse collar tackles and chop blocks

You really want to avoid any maneuvers that are illegal in the NFL. Pulling someone down by their collarbone can be very dangerous and cause a fracture. And taking out your uncle’s knees are a particularly bad idea especially considering he just had surgery on them last month.

I don't care how good your mom's new boyfriend is, don't break the rules.

4. Excessive celebration

It’s fine to celebrate after you’ve scored a Thanksgiving touchdown, but don’t get too carried away. When the time comes to eat dinner and watch Charlie Brown don’t keep talking trash to your nephew. It will make things very awkward.

Yeah I get it, you scored. No need for a choreographed dance.

3. Helmet to helmet hits

This is a big one. With all the controversy in the NFL around head trauma and concussions, it’s even more important to avoid helmet to helmet hits or tackling with the crown of the skull to another person’s head. For one, you’re probably not even wearing football helmets so any severe hit could lead to serious brain damage, possibly death. Holding a candlelight vigil at an emergency room is not exactly the way your family wanted to spend turkey day.

No Thanksgiving should involve an intracerebral heamorrage.

2. Spearing grandma straight to hell

If you’re a big football enthusiast you might totally get into the zone when you’re playing football and when that happens anything goes. You don’t see anything else but the other team’s ballcarrier and you want to just annihilate them. The problem is sometimes your grandma decides to throw a pass or two or take a carry inside the tackles and that’s when you go into beast mode and lay the hammer down, crashing into her sternum and driving her entire frail body into the ground so hard it quakes. Then when your performance enhancing drugs start wearing off and everyone’s screaming makes you snap out of it you see what you’ve done.

Grandma knows better than to rush up the middle.

And the number one thing to avoid doing at your family’s Thanksgiving game is...

1. Making out with a cheerleader

It’s everyone’s football dream to score the winning touchdown then start making out with a cheerleader. The problem is, on Thanksgiving the cheerleader is likely going to be one of your cousins. Depending on what state you live in, this may be more or less acceptable, but really if you share that much DNA it’s best to avoid all that.

If your cousin looks like that and you're in Arkansas, maybe.