What does 4-downs mean?

Baby, Are you Down, Down, Down Down, Down?
In American football, each team has four downs (plays, attempts) to move the football 10 yards down the field.
Each down begins with a snap or a kick, and ends when the ball or the player in possession of the ball:

• is declared down by an official,
• a team scores,
• or the ball or player in possession of it leaves the field of play.

Each time one of these three things happens, it is declared a “first down,” “second down,” and so on and so forth. Although it doesn’t seem like much, it is actually normal for teams to advance only about three to four downs on each play!
On each play, the offensive team must get the ball 10 yards downfield (toward the goalposts), from the start of play – this is called “1^st and 10.” If the next 10-yard line is less than 10 yards downfield they are to achieve “1^st and goal.” If the offense moves the ball past that line, they make a new first down.
If a team achieves 10 yards in four plays or less, it has another four attempts – a new set of downs – to cover the next 10 yards, and they just keep going this way until:

• a touchdown is scored
• they scrimmage the ball to get the first down again
• they kick the ball (either by punting or making a field goal attempt)

If after four downs, the team is unable to gain 10 yards or score a touchdown, it must give up possession of the ball to the defensive team, and the action on the field then shifts direction. The line of scrimmage (where play begins) for the next play will be determined by the position of the ball when it is downed. A constant back-and-forth. Reminds me of Capture the Flag – did you play that growing up too?
There you have the basics of the four downs. Since this is Football 101, we’ll stop there for now. Stay
tuned for more football basics. In the meantime, does anyone else have the Jay Sean song featuring ‘Lil Wayne in their heads now??