The meetings of the annual NFL owners bring a lot of rumors and rule changes. The meetings brought some significant changes. The free kick formation rules will be made permanent this year, according to a release from the NFL. That's all. It doesn't affect much. The second change relates to the overtime rules. It is about damn time! The overtime rules of the National Football League have been criticized for years. Both teams should be able to touch the football in overtime in the playoffs. The rule change will not be changed for regular-season games, where the team that wins the coin toss and scores a touchdown on its first possession will not have to use a field goal. In order to end the game quickly and fairly, overtime rules should always be made. In the regular season, teams that have received the ball first have won less than half of the games. It is a different story in the playoffs. Since the rule change in the 2011 playoffs, 10 of the 12 games that reached overtime have been won by the team that received the ball first. This is the wrong choice because it was clear that a change had to be made. The point of overtime should be to end the game quickly and fairly. You don't want to risk a player suffering a serious injury, so forcing them to play for longer is important. You don't want to jeopardize the integrity of the game. I would like to add a third caveat to overtime rules. The overtime rules should have suspense. Even if it isn't, every moment should feel like it. The new NFL OT rules don't feel like that. The game goes on regardless of what happens on the first possession. You could take a nap during the first possession, wake up when the second team gets the ball, and you would know everything you need to know.
It doesn't matter what happens on the first possession of overtime. The suspense starts when the second team gets the ball. The stakes are set after the first team has possession. That is not enjoyable. You want the viewers to be engaged. The overtime policy doesn't work.
The proposed rule change that would have kept the NFL's overtime policy mostly intact, except that the game would only end if the first team scores a touchdown, is what I would have preferred. It adds suspense from the start. The second team feels like they need to stop their opponents from reaching the end zone, but at the same time, the game doesn't necessarily end there. If teams don't want to go for two, they don't have to. They could just kick a field goal. The suspense builds from the start of the overtime period because the game could end on the first possession. Let's say the first team chooses a two-point conversion. Let's say they fail, that's an enormous moment in and of itself. There is insane pressure on both teams. The defense has to make sure the offense doesn't score a touchdown. If they get in, they don't need a PAT to win.
Chef kissed it beautiful! It's pretty fair considering that the two-point plays in the NFL are converted at a 49.6% clip. You might be thinking, "Okay, but that's for every team." We should be looking at the best teams in the league and their two-point conversion rates because they are going to be playing in the playoffs. San Francisco, New England, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Dallas, Tennessee, and Buffalo all had two-point conversion rates higher than 50 percent. Half of the teams that made the playoffs. Guess what will happen in 2020? It was seven above and seven below. The team that goes second would technically be favored because it was only four of twelve.
That is what makes the new overtime rule changes so disappointing. The rules were not changed, but the safest option was chosen because of the amount of opposition from the public. There were better options at the feet of the owners, but they chose the most basic option, turkey on white bread.
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