I was bored recently and decided to check it out again. After reading through it, I'm think most of everything they do in the manga is completely illegal. That is, by using the rules of American football, and using the physics of the series itself, half of the guys in the story would be expelled and the other half would have already died. For example, in the story people random do karate chop/choke hold people because it's a good way to create a fumble. People who get tackled by Shin's Trident Tackle actually have problem breathing and end up dropping the ball from suffocation. If you look what the people look like after taking a Triangle Dynamite, the only way that move can create that look is if you punch the other guy in the stomach repeatedly. There's actually a guy who did E Honda's hundred hand slap.
The funny thing is none of these moves are impossible physically. There's nothing hard about choking someone with your hand to make them drop the football, other than that it's illegal. Gaoh sent every quarterback he faced off on a stretcher and I'm sure it's not hard to do even in real life (that's why there's the bounty scandal), except nobody is going to put up with a guy who purposely tries to maim the opposing quarterback on every tackle.
On the reverse end, using Eyeshield 21 universe's definition for physical prowess, you can imply someone like Gaoh/Shin/Mr. Don can probably kill someone by touching them. Yet Sena, the main character, is described as having far worse stamina than the average quarterback, and he can take a hit from Mr. Don without even any adverse effect, while pretty much anyone else needs a stretcher if they even get touched by Mr. Don. For that matter, Sena is throwing random stiff arms on guys with 10 times his physical power and apparently having no problem. Again, there's nothing particularly crazy that a small and fast guy wants to be a running back in American football. You can probably do it fine until the first time you get tackled by a 300lb guy, and then that'd probably be the end of your career. Yet while plenty of normal physique guys do end up ending their career from football injuries, the skinniest guys never get hurt at all when tackled.
Finally, I noticed that Eyeshield 21 seems to be assume that everyone in American football plays both offense and defense, because if you're best running back you got to be defending the enemy's running back to prove how good you are, never mind that being a good running back doesn't necessarily mean you'd be good at defending one. The wide receivers also have multiple duels, and again there's no reason to believe the two top wide receivers in the world would be especially good at guarding each other. Heck, you got quarterback versus quarterback which is pretty hilarious. I mean I know manga is all about 1on1, but most sports you've to have the same play offense and defense. American football isn't like that, and there's really no reason to use your offense powerhouse to play on D even if you assume people in this world have infinite stamina. Yes the Devil Bats' original excuse is that they only have 11 people on their team so everyone has to play D and O the whole time (which would mean every guy on their team has insane stamina, and yet of course every enemy team they run into has even better stamina) but of course every major team that does have more than 22 people still plays all their best players on all teams. The quarterback for the Cowboys plays offense and kickoff return team even though he's shown absolutely no indication as to why he'd be good at kickoff return (can't exactly throw the ball in such a situation).
It's not so much as Eyeshield 21 is bad (it's actually pretty good for sports manga), but when I read it I'm not even sure if whoever wrote this is even aware of the rules of American football.
The funny thing is none of these moves are impossible physically. There's nothing hard about choking someone with your hand to make them drop the football, other than that it's illegal. Gaoh sent every quarterback he faced off on a stretcher and I'm sure it's not hard to do even in real life (that's why there's the bounty scandal), except nobody is going to put up with a guy who purposely tries to maim the opposing quarterback on every tackle.
On the reverse end, using Eyeshield 21 universe's definition for physical prowess, you can imply someone like Gaoh/Shin/Mr. Don can probably kill someone by touching them. Yet Sena, the main character, is described as having far worse stamina than the average quarterback, and he can take a hit from Mr. Don without even any adverse effect, while pretty much anyone else needs a stretcher if they even get touched by Mr. Don. For that matter, Sena is throwing random stiff arms on guys with 10 times his physical power and apparently having no problem. Again, there's nothing particularly crazy that a small and fast guy wants to be a running back in American football. You can probably do it fine until the first time you get tackled by a 300lb guy, and then that'd probably be the end of your career. Yet while plenty of normal physique guys do end up ending their career from football injuries, the skinniest guys never get hurt at all when tackled.
Finally, I noticed that Eyeshield 21 seems to be assume that everyone in American football plays both offense and defense, because if you're best running back you got to be defending the enemy's running back to prove how good you are, never mind that being a good running back doesn't necessarily mean you'd be good at defending one. The wide receivers also have multiple duels, and again there's no reason to believe the two top wide receivers in the world would be especially good at guarding each other. Heck, you got quarterback versus quarterback which is pretty hilarious. I mean I know manga is all about 1on1, but most sports you've to have the same play offense and defense. American football isn't like that, and there's really no reason to use your offense powerhouse to play on D even if you assume people in this world have infinite stamina. Yes the Devil Bats' original excuse is that they only have 11 people on their team so everyone has to play D and O the whole time (which would mean every guy on their team has insane stamina, and yet of course every enemy team they run into has even better stamina) but of course every major team that does have more than 22 people still plays all their best players on all teams. The quarterback for the Cowboys plays offense and kickoff return team even though he's shown absolutely no indication as to why he'd be good at kickoff return (can't exactly throw the ball in such a situation).
It's not so much as Eyeshield 21 is bad (it's actually pretty good for sports manga), but when I read it I'm not even sure if whoever wrote this is even aware of the rules of American football.
