Football

Note that all of the answers are of length 10, which is the same as the width of the grid given in the puzzle.

Start by writing in the answers, a letter in each cell.

The flavor text of the puzzle mentions "running up the field" - try looking for words in the filled in grid going up from lower in the grid.

There are seven words corresponding to football routes in the grid.

For each of the football routes in the grid, we want to "extract" one letter - the routes can be used to decide which letter. The ordering is given by the jersey numbers at the bottom of the grid. Don't forget that the direction of a route depends on whether you're on the left or right side of the field!