The NFL's new overtime rule is a win for fairness. And a win for regular season ties.
NFL overtimes can no longer be won on a coin flip alone. After years of reform, the league has settled into a system that guarantees both teams at least one possession in the extra frame (barring a dramatic walk-off safety. Which, as we all know, is the perfect ending to any football game).
After amending overtime rules to ensure one team couldn't lose on a first possession overtime field goal, this 2025 reform means even an opening drive touchdown won't end things. It means the 2024 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and 2024 Atlanta Falcons, who each lost twice in the fifth quarter without touching the ball, would get a chance at rebuttal in their quest for the NFC South title. It means the 2021 Buffalo Bills would have had the chance to extend one of the greatest playoff games of this generation instead of keeping Josh Allen on the sideline to watch Patrick Mahomes lather himself in glory instead.
There's another hitch as well. Overtime will still last only 10 minutes.
The NFL average drive time was 2:49 in 2024. That would be even longer on most touchdown drives. In a back-to-back touchdown situation, the first team to get the ball in overtime would suddenly be faced with a two-minute drill to score game-winning points. That's a big ask from an exhausted squad -- and the common sense reaction is it will lead to more games that end with a knotted score.
In 2012, the league instituted the rule that ensures a team cannot lose on a first possession overtime field goal. In the decade before that reform, there was exactly one tie game -- and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, on the field at the time, had no idea it could even end that way.
In the first five years after eliminating these quick-kick wins, there were five ties. In 2017, overtime length was shortened from 15 to 10 minutes. In the first five years of that system, there were five more ties (and two more from 2022 to 2024).
This all points to two outcomes. The first is teams scoring the second touchdown of overtime being tempted to go for a game-winning (or losing) two-point conversion to avoid getting beat on a walk-off field goal in the final seconds of an overtime that suddenly resembles the old rule. The second is a modest proliferation of extra "X-X-1" markers in the NFL standings.
This new overtime rule is sacrificing a few more boring regular season outcomes to ensure some of the league's best offenses at least get the chance to fight back with their Super Bowl hopes on the line. It may end in more anticlimactic endings in October just to create legendary finishes in January. While that may leave a few more games whose finishes leave no one satisfied, it's ultimately a simple solution to a problem that should have been fixed decades ago.