NFL

Shorter NFL Overtimes Would Lead to Significantly More Ties

The NFL may change their overtime rules again, and this change isn't good for fans.

Be prepared: roughly 100,000 columns are being written as we speak as to why the NFL should adopt college football's overtime rules. Because that's what happens anytime the league talks about changing overtime rules.

On Tuesday morning, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport tweeted that there's a "good chance" the NFL ends up shortening its regular season overtime to just 10 minutes instead of the full 15-minute quarter. This, of course, is coming just five years after the league changed overtimes rules to give less luck to the coin toss winner.

Naturally, a shorter overtime means a higher chance for a tie. And while team overtime strategy may change if this rule is set, we're more than likely looking at an NFL future with many more draws.

Since the most recent overtime rule change that was put in place at the start of the 2012 season, the NFL has seen 83 regular season overtime games. Of those 83, 5 ended in a tie.

But plenty more saw the final play of the game occur with fewer than five minutes to go, which is the timeframe that would no longer exist with the rule change.

Number of GamesTiesRateFinal Play With < 5 Mins RemainingRate
8356.02%2226.51%


In essence, with this change, we're looking at over a quarter of NFL games that enter overtime ending in a tie. And you could also make the argument that this number would be higher with teams strategizing to hold onto the ball as long as possible in order to win at the last minute.

Is this really want the NFL wants?