Should The NFL Call Time on Overtime?
American sports have a seemingly intractable opposition to the idea that games can end without one team winning and the other losing. Major League Baseball insists on infinite extra innings to break a tie in every game of a season where teams play several games per week – occasionally even twice back-to-back on the same day – for more than half the year.
The NFL is actually alone amongst the big four US leagues for actually allowing a regular-season tie in any shape or form, but even that is a seriously rare occurrence, as it relies on 15 scoreless minutes, or – since the new overtime rules were implemented in 2012 – a field goal apiece and no more scoring thereafter. There have only been three ties in the last four seasons (of which, incidentally, two occurred through a field goal exchange), and seven consecutive seasons between 1990 and 1996 saw every single game produce a winner and loser.
This reliance on overtime to settle a game is an issue, because it means the outcome of games can very often hinge on a coin flip.
In fact, the overtime rule change was designed to reduce that influence, as the team receiving the ball first can no longer win immediately on a field goal, only on a touchdown. Many fans are still uncomfortable with even that.
The current solution is not terrible. Only slightly more than half of overtime games under the new rules are won by the team that wins the coin toss. Teams having to defend first get the chance to score from typically good field position if they can prevent a score on that first drive, and we saw another example of that in the Colts-Texans Sunday Night Football game; the Colts won the toss, were forced to punt, and promptly lost the game on a short field goal set up by one Brock Osweiler pass.
However, the very existence of overtime is a problem for the NFL. It’s additional play with the associated wear and tear (or sometimes worse) on the players, but it doesn’t produce any revenue, because networks essentially never sell ad space on an as-needed basis for overtime (last doing so on a widespread basis more than a decade ago to the now-defunct AIG).
In fact, it’s actually a revenue loss in some cases; for instance, if it’s an early kickoff on Sunday, fans will end up missing the start of the late double-header game and quite possibly an early ad break. (Commercials in NFL games are called between quarters, at the two-minute warning, and on the first eight stoppages in play per half other than after the opening kickoff. Ever wondered about the ads-kickoff-ads pattern that happens so often? That’s why.)
By that logic, the NFL – desperate for revenue maximisation and under pressure to do so without adding to the burden on players – can easily justify getting rid of overtime in the regular season. But what about the postseason, where a winner absolutely has to be found on the day?
Inspiration here can be taken from another idea dismissed as un-American in some circles, the penalty shootout. In its early days, MLS utilised them even in the regular season, but with an ice hockey-esque implementation previously used by the North American Soccer League a generation earlier, where players had five seconds to score in a one-on-one situation starting 35 yards from goal. Whilst unquestionably odd to British eyes – and abandoned after 1999 – it at least partly fixed the oft-voiced criticism of traditional shootouts that is shared with NFL overtime, namely being perceived as being dependent on luck. Just ask any Green Bay Packers fan who watched their team lose without getting the ball in that January 2016 playoff barnstormer against the Cardinals.
Take that idea, expand it, and consider this: replace postseason overtime with a two-point conversion shootout. There would be a coin toss to decide who went first, and which end of the stadium was used. After that, it’d work just like a penalty shootout, only with each offense taking it in turns to run a play from the 2.
Instantly, you’ve largely removed the perception of luck, you’ve given both teams the opportunity to win the game at the end, and – crucially – you’ve also all but removed the potential for a massively-watched game to drag on and on and on, teasing TV networks by forcing them to air enormous, schedule-destroying chunks of television commercial-free to their largest audiences of the year.
This isn’t a perfect solution, in fairness. Because this is a real football play, it can be affected by real football penalties that would need to be called as usual, or video replays if there’s any doubt as to whether the ball crossed the plane. (Although perhaps goal-line technology might be introduced in the NFL first.) That would reduce the time-saving potential.
Still, it puts a realistic lid on the length of a postseason game, all but removes any sense that the fate of a season hinges on the flip of a coin, and – in all likelihood – be just as likely, if not more, to produce memorable moments to pass down the generations.