Monday, January 5, 2009

Time for an Overtime Change

The current overtime rules for the NFL suck ass!

Let me begin by saying I have felt this way for quite a while and this is not a result of the Indianapolis Colts loss to the San Diego Charges in overtime on Saturday night. This is just the exclamation point on my rant.

Why do teams get to go for 60 minutes battling each other to a tie just to have only one team get the opportunity to possess the ball in overtime? How is that fair to the team that loses the coin toss? Yes, their defense should have done their job and stopped them, but to not allow the offense to have one chance to even the game is just plain stupid.

I do not want the NFL to implement the NCAA football overtime rules. For NFL teams, that would results in games going into 8 or 9 overtimes unless you disallowed field goals after the third or fourth overtime.

I know the Arena Football League will never compare to the NFL, but I do feel they get it right when it comes to overtimes. Each team gets at least one possession and if the game is still tied after each team has had a possession, then it becomes sudden death. Now the coin toss becomes more strategic because you have to decide whether you want the ball first or wait to see if you might need to score only a field goal to tie or win the game or if you must score a TD to tie the game up.

I'm not asking for an extreme modification of the rules, just to make the rules fair. Of course I would not be as adamant if the Colts had a fucking running game or if they had a defense that can actually tackle someone or quit with the stupid tacky penalties. Let's just do what is right and let each team have a possession before it becomes sudden death.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Slut Bunwalla said...

I'll be honest, I'm not as upset about the current overtime rules, especially when the stats show that all time, the team winning the coin toss only wins the game 53% of the time.

However, I'd be in favor of them changing it to a 10:00 overtime period. Whoever is ahead at the end of the extra 10:00 wins. This would still allow both offense and defense to be a factor, but both teams would likely get a shot at the ball.

In the unlikely event a team keeps the ball for the entire 10:00 period, then the other team's defense should have played better (I think it's extremely unlikely that a team would do that, especially if you use the end-of-half timing rules for OT, which would have the clock stop when a runner goes out of bounds, etc.).

With that system, it would likely give both teams a chance with the ball and not turn the game into an offensive shoot-out (i.e. the college rules).

January 6, 2009 at 5:34 PM  
Blogger Slut Bunwalla said...

Oh, yeah--I have to ask: 2009 NFL Draft tag???

January 7, 2009 at 4:01 PM  
Blogger Zinglebert Bembledack said...

Thanks for pointing that out. That was supposed to be 2008 NFL Playoffs and I'm not exactly sure what happened on that.

The tag has been updated.

January 12, 2009 at 4:03 PM  

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