NFL – UH-OH, MORE TIE GAMES EXPECTED WITH NEW RULE TO SHORTEN OVERTIME

This week at the league spring meetings, NFL owners are expected to approve the reduction of overtime play in preseason and regular season games from its current 15 minutes to 10 minutes.

The former NFL senior V.P. of Officiating, Dean Blandino, told Pro Football Focus in March that the idea stems from “player safety”.  And, specifically, a concern for teams who play on a Sunday and then have to go out and play again the following Thursday night.

The inherent problem with this is that by decreasing the length of the overtime period, the number of plays will be limited. This could lead to more tie games, which is a terrible idea.

In my October 2016 article, I outlined the reason(s) tie games are ridiculous, but the crux of it is this: No winner of a grueling game makes all the hard work seem pointless.

Yet, instead of finding ways to avoid this, the NFL now introduces a method to encourage more stalemates?

First, they give us the unfair modified sudden-death overtime coin toss procedure, and then they decide to shorten the time that could actually determine a victorious team?

Has anyone really thought this out?

There are so many other experimental ways to avoid ties.  I don’t understand what the issue is in not attempting to probe them.

Surely, it would be better to find a quicker way to ascertain a winner and improve player safety, instead of engaging in a silly 10-minute period that could still render the game scoreless, right?

What about the idea of a kicking contest?

I like the suggestion introduced in a Nov 2013 Bleacher Report article whereby each OT team’s kicker will begin at their 30-yard line and keep kicking field goals, moving back 5 yards at a time, until a player misses.  The one with the longest successful kick wins the game for his team.

Or, we could eliminate OT altogether and award the team with the least amount of penalties during regulation the winner.

Even better, reward the team with the least number of turnovers with the win.

If those non-traditional ideas or others like them are too radical for the NFL, then why can’t they simply allow ONLY those specific teams that have a short week to reduce their OT games to 10 minutes and keep all others at 15?

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://theladylovessports.com/contact.