NFL’s awful OT rule needs to be fixed
It was the worst possible ending to the best NFL playoff game ever.
Over the last 20 minutes of regulation, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen played the QB equivalent of H-O-R-S-E, trading jaw-dropping throws, dazzling escapes and touchdowns. They combined for 41 points and almost 450 yards in 10 drives, one of them lasting just 13 seconds.
It was a glimpse of what we can look forward to over the next decade in the NFL. Then it just … ended.
When the Kansas City Chiefs won the coin flip, the game was effectively over. Mahomes did what Mahomes does while Allen could only sit on the bench and watch, never even getting the chance to touch the ball in overtime in a game that determined who plays for the AFC championship.
“Unfortunately, the coin toss went the way it went,” Allen said afterward. “The rules are what they are. I can’t complain about that because if it was the other way around, we’d be celebrating, too. It is what it is at this point.”
Yes, but it shouldn’t be. Certainly not in the playoffs.
There is no great way to break ties in sports. Whether it’s a shootout, penalty kicks or sudden death, someone is always going to feel short-changed in some way. And the NFL’s OT rules are at least a slight improvement over the previous format, when a field goal on the opening possession of overtime could win the game. But when so much is at stake, something that has no relation to athletic ability or physical skills should not determine, or even influence, the winner.
“If you are still arguing, in a game like that, it’s not in the best interest of EVERYONE that Mahomes and Allen get the ball in OT, I don’t know what to tell you,” former NFL tight end Greg Olsen, an analyst for Fox Sports, said on Twitter. “In a game where neither team could stop the other at the end, a literal coin flip determined the ending.”
As it so often does. Citing NFL Research, the NFL Network’s Andrew Siciliano said teams that win the coin toss have won more than half of overtime games. Eighty-six out of 163, to be exact, which works out to 52.8%.
In the playoffs, teams that win the coin toss are 10-1.
That isn’t chance, it’s a con. Rather than allowing its biggest games to be determined by its best players, the NFL leaves it up to the whims of a small piece of metal.
Yes, you can say the Bills’ defense was as much a factor in the final outcome, failing to stop Kansas City in overtime or in the 13-second drive that ended with Harrison Butker’s 49-yard field goal to tie the score at the end of regulation.
But the Chiefs’ defense couldn’t stop Allen or the Bills in the last 20 minutes, either. Yet all that mattered was what side was up when a coin landed on the ground.
“When you’ve got two teams going back and forth like you’re going, it kind of stinks you don’t get to see the other guy go,” Mahomes said.
Three years ago, it was Mahomes who waged a spectacular duel with Tom Brady in the AFC championship game, only to see the New England Patriots win the coin toss and, less than five minutes later, the game while Mahomes was powerless on the sideline.
Brady and the Patriots won the coin toss again in the Super Bowl. Given the Atlanta Falcons had already gagged up a 28-3 lead, the odds are pretty good they would have found a way to squander that first possession in OT, too, even if they had won the toss.
“I’ll take the win this time,” Mahomes said. “All you can do is play the rules the way the rules are explained.”
If we wanted to watch high-stakes games determined by chance, we’d go stand around the craps tables in Vegas. The NFL can, and must, do better, especially in the playoffs. Give each team a possession and, if it’s still tied, then go to sudden death. Require two-point conversion tries after touchdowns in overtime, similar to what college football does. Kick field goals from increasing distances.
Heck, even rock, paper, scissors would be better.
After that loss in the AFC championship game, the Chiefs proposed a rules change to give each team a possession in overtime. There was so little support for it, the owners didn’t even bother voting on the proposal.
Maybe now, after Bills-Chiefs, that will change.