Gridiron girls: Women learn finer points of football

Mary McCusker went to her friend's house a football rookie. Now she's a veteran. Sort of.

"Now I get the one-down, two-down, three-down thing," she said. "I didn't have a clue what that was."

She and about 20 other women visited Debbie Tyman's Young Street home Sunday for a primer on the great game of football. In Tyman's driveway they ran plays, learned how to screen a pass and discussed the finer points of the sport.

Tyman's like the Vince Lombardi of Lexington football: A true legend among football fans. She remembers going to her son Joe's football games at Lexington High School where she'd suddenly find herself surrounded by other moms, explaining to them the rules and the reasons for plays.

"They'd tell me, 'We'll just cheer when you cheer,'" she said.

Sunday afternoon's "game" was slow-going at first. Each player had a nametag with one of the real Patriots' names. They each held a card with their position on it; two colors delineated offense and defense.

Tyman, the Tom Brady of the crew, called out each play beforehand. With no padding involved, the "blocks" turned into jumbled masses of giggling bodies. Usually a cheer from both sides erupted after a score.

The afternoon had a charitable component to it, too. The ladies raffled off a Tom Brady trading card, and the $62 raised went to Operation Christmas Child, which sends shoeboxes full of items all over the world to needy children.

The winner gave the card to her grandson.

"He couldn't believe his grandma won it at a football party," Tyman said.

After the tutorial, some joined Tyman to watch the Patriots defeat the Dallas Cowboys, 48-27. They checked for each penalty using a cheat sheet their host devised called "Penalties - Mothers Know Them All." It included such pearls of wisdom as "Keep your hands to yourself: Holding, facemask, pass interference."

One husband called Tyman after the game to thank her and tell her it was the first time his wife had watched a game with him.

"People actually got it, so it was good," she said.

-- Lexington Minuteman