Tag: nfl overtime

How the NFL’s new playoff overtime rules work, explained

The NFL will ensure both playoff teams possess the ball at least once in overtime.

The NFL is changing the way its overtimes operate in the postseason. Call it the Josh Allen Rule.

The league’s owners reportedly passed new legislation that will ensure that both teams get at least one possession in overtime of playoff games. That rule change, brought forth in different forms at the NFL’s Annual League Meeting by the Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts, and Tennessee Titans, eliminates the possibility of a team losing a postseason game without giving their offense a chance to even the score.

It’s a timely addition — fewer than three months earlier, the Buffalo Bills saw their playoff run snuffed out in overtime after the Kansas City Chiefs won the coin toss, scored a touchdown, and left Allen, who’d thrown for 329 yards and four touchdowns at that point, to watch helplessly from the bench.

“I was, unfortunately like a lot of other teams, watching that Buffalo-Kansas City game as a fan, and saw the ending and felt like maybe our fans would have wanted to see Josh Allen have an opportunity,” Titans head coach Mike Vrabel told the media in Palm Beach. “I felt like … if you wanted to win the football game, you had to validate it with a two-point conversion and if you didn’t, and you kicked the extra point, the other team would have the opportunity to have the football.”

Though the Titans’ proposed caveat that a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion could end a game in overtime without each team getting the ball didn’t pass, the removal of a first-possession sudden death ending marks the latest change to the league’s rules. The proposal passed by virtue of a 29-3 vote, per NFL.com.

If a team scores a touchdown on the first possession of overtime, it no longer means an automatic victory. The side that lost the coin toss will have a chance at rebuttal. If they tie the game, overtime continues in a sudden death format; first team to score (again) by any method — touchdown, field goal, or safety — wins. If they take the lead (via two-point conversion or kicking an extra point following a failed conversion on the other side) the game ends there. A defensive touchdown also ends the game.

This new rule will take effect only in the postseason. Regular season games can still end with a first-possession touchdown.

This latest rule change is further evidence the NFL is willing to change the game in order to address the competitive balance, albeit slowly. In 2010, the league modified its rules to give both teams the opportunity to possess the ball at least once in overtime barring a touchdown by the team who received the opening OT kickoff. While that rule was originally exclusive to the postseason, it became standard for all games in 2012. In 2017, the league shortened the length of the extra period from 15 minutes to 10 in an effort to improve player safety.

This is a promising development that should address an inequality in the league. Super Bowl 51 ended with the New England Patriots scoring a game-winning touchdown that didn’t give the Atlanta Falcons a shot at redemption in overtime. The same thing happened in the 2018 AFC title game against the Chiefs, who served that injustice right back to the Bills in January.

Now, teams won’t see their Super Bowl hopes hinge on a gassed defense and coin toss in the postseason. It’s cold comfort for the Bills this offseason, but at least it ensures players like Allen will get a fair shot to even the score in overtime.

[listicle id=1859601]

NFL changes rules to give each team a chance to score in the postseason

The NFL has changed its overtime rules to give each team a chance to score, no matter what. It’s past time for this modification.

On the last day of the 2022 league meetings, NFL owners voted to approve a modified version of a proposal put forth by the Philadelphia Eagles and Indianapolis Colts, which now allows both teams to have a chance to score in overtime. The modification is that the new rule applies only in the postseason, which is just fine, because the postseason was where the former rule, ending a game if the first team with the ball in overtime scores a touchdown, had led to a 10-2 overall disparity between the team taking the ball, and the team on the wrong side of that equation.

It’s past time for this modification, and the rule it replaces was weird and reactionary at best.

In the 2009 NFC Championship game, the New Orleans Saints beat the Minnesota Vikings, 31-28, on a 40-yard Garrett Hartley field goal with 10:15 left in overtime. The fact that Brett Favre wasn’t able to participate in Super Bowl XLIV caused the NFL to alter its overtime rules. Now, instead of a first-drive field goal winning the game, a team would have to score a touchdown or a safety on its first overtime drive to win, and if that team kicked a field goal, the opposing team would have an opportunity to tie or win from there.

In the last four seasons, we’ve seen two different instances in which outstanding NFL quarterbacks were denied any chance to help their teams win a playoff game in overtime, because the opponents scored touchdowns on their first drives. There was the New England Patriots beating Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs in the 2018 AFC Championship game on a 13-play, 75-yard drive that ended with a two-yard Red Burkhead touchdown run. All Mahomes could do was walk off the field, and wait until next year.

Mahomes hasn’t missed an AFC Championship game since, and one reason he made his fourth straight was his incredible performance late in the Chiefs’ 42-36 divisional round win over the Buffalo Bills. Josh Allen and his crew thought they had it won when Allen threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Gabe Davis with 13 seconds left (it was Davis’ fourth touchdown catch of the game, setting a single-game postseason record), but Mahomes countered with his own particular magic, hitting Tyreek Hill for 18 yards and Travis Kelce for 25 yards, setting up Harrison Butker’s 49-yard field goal as regulation expired.

And then, after the Chiefs won the toss in overtime, Allen could do nothing but watch helplessly as Mahomes engineered an eight-play, 75-yard drive that ended with an eight-yard touchdown pass to Travis Kelce.

So, that was two amazing quarterbacks denied any chance at winning, based on the luck of a coin toss. Does that seem fair after 60 game clock minutes of amazing play? In this case, did it make sense to slam the door in Allen’s face in a fourth quarter that featured 25 points and four lead changes in the final 1:54?

I think not.

“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,” Allen said after the game. “It is what it is at this point. We just didn’t make enough plays tonight.”

Allen is right about that, and the Bills should have squibbed the kick with 13 seconds left to force the Chiefs’ returner to either return the ball and bleed the clock or give himself up with bad field position, but there was nothing Allen could do to counter — simply because of the luck of the draw.

After that 2018 AFC Championship game loss, the Chiefs put forth a similar proposal, only to be told that the league would spend the next year “figuring it out.”

Four years later, the NFL finally figured it out — and did the right thing. Sadly, we can’t play a couple of playoff overtimes in a retroactive fashion, but if you though the 2021 playoffs were incredible, 2022 could be even better.