Could more ties be on the way in the National…Football…League? Perhaps so, if the Competition Committee gets its way.
The Competition Committee has proposed a rule that would shorten overtime in regular season games to ten minutes, down from the 15 minutes that the overtime period currently lasts.
Interesting proposal coming from Comp Comm: shortening preseason and reg season OT to 10 mins. Postseason would remain 15.
— Judy Battista (@judybattista) March 20, 2017
If there’s anything that NFL fans want, it’s the possibility of more ties in regular season games.
PFT reports that there were 83 overtime games in the NFL over the last five seasons, and a whopping 22 of those went longer than ten minutes in the extra period. TIES FOR EVERYONE!
It’s a weird solution proposed by the league, given that quarters are 15 minutes and that the Postseason overtime rules wouldn’t change at all. If the league really wants to change the overtime rules, why not institute a rule that the team who wins the kickoff can’t attempt a field goal? Or why not eliminate the “both teams get a possession” rule? Or why not even kill the clock and just let the teams play until there’s a winner? Or even adopt the college football 25-yard line system?
All this is going to do is create more ties, while not actually changing the style of play in overtime. If a team eats seven or eight minutes of the clock just to kick the field goal that will guarantee the other team a possession, the other team isn’t going to just start chuckling deep balls to try to win the game – they’re going to try to manage the clock better to set themselves up for a long, game-tying field goal.
I can’t wait until a team like the Bengals misses the playoffs because they end up with an 8-5-3 record.
