Nora Sayre of "The New York Times" called the film "a terrible picture" with prison guards that "behave like leering sci-fi monsters" and Reynolds doing a "lumbering imitation" of Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront". Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" declared it "an outstanding action drama, combining the brutish excitement of football competition with the brutalities of contemporary prison life. Burt Reynolds again asserts his genuine star power, here as a former football pro forced to field a team under blackmail of warden Eddie Albert." Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" wrote that Reynolds was "perfect in this brutal comic fantasy about a football game between crazily ruthless convicts and crazily ruthless guards; for all its bone-crunching collisions, the picture is almost irresistibly good-natured and funny." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that director Robert Aldrich "is effective in portraying black inmates as a world apart in the prison system; it's the one realistic element in this oldfashioned and brutal drama." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" stated, "The story is both clever and unsubtle, the action riot-gun fast from start to satisfying finish, the characters vivid and boldly drawn, the jokes set up and paid off with old-pro efficiency: the bone-snapping, billy-club violence (of which there is inevitably a fair amount) is by Aldrich's standards restrained and by any standards allowable." Tom Shales of the "Washington Post" wrote, "It might seem morally imperative at this point to condemn with indignation what this movie is trying to do—stir up gut-level reactions at a mob-baiting level. And yet, however one may feel about that goal, it would be hard to deny that the movie achieves it."