The NFL’s divisional playoff round Jan. 22 and 23 provided one of the greatest weekends of football in the league’s history.
But it left a terrible taste in my mouth.
Three thrilling games were decided by last-second field goals, and then the fourth topped them all: Bills vs. Chiefs.
It was an epic duel between quarterbacks Josh Allen of the Bills and Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs, with each making incredible plays to keep their team alive. They both played near-flawless games, each throwing for at least 300 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions, and each miraculously leading two scoring drives within the last two minutes of regulation as the teams combined for 25 points in that span.
But at midfield just before overtime, Allen made the game’s decisive mistake: he called tails.
The coin landed face up, the Chiefs got the ball, and eight plays and 75 yards later, Mahomes tossed the touchdown pass that sent his team to the AFC Championship game. The NFL’s inane and ill-conceived sudden death overtime rules meant Allen and the Bills didn’t get a chance to answer.
Most of the time when a necessary rule change is exposed, it’s because something strange happens that no one had realized was possible (like Kenny Pickett’s fake slide in this year’s ACC Championship game).
But it’s never a surprise when the coin toss effectively decides an overtime game (and it’s especially predictable in a shootout like Bills vs. Chiefs). For those unfamiliar with NFL overtime rules, if the team who wins the coin toss scores a touchdown on its first drive, the other team never even gets the ball for a chance to tie the game. If the coin toss-winning team kicks a field goal or fails to score and then the other team does the same, the toss-winning team then gets another chance to end the game by scoring at all on the next possession.
As a result of those advantages, the team that wins the pre-overtime coin toss has won 10 out of the 11 overtime playoff games (under current overtime rules), including winning seven times by scoring on the first possession of OT to end the game.
For teams to grind through a whole season to make the playoffs and fight through an amazing game like this just to have their fate randomly flipped up in the air by the thumb of the referee is not right.
Who would come up with a rule like this? Someone who hates football?
College football’s overtime system (alternating possessions and then alternating two-point conversions) is far more fair and dramatic, and prevents ties while giving each team the same number of possessions.
The NFL’s system, on the other hand, simply breeds unjust outcomes.
The Steelers never got the ball in overtime of their 2011 Wild Card game against the Broncos, when Tim Tebow’s touchdown toss famously ended the game on the first play of the extra period.
And though history has mostly remembered the fact that they blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots, the Falcons never got the ball in overtime of Super Bowl LI.
Maybe the Falcons didn’t have the kind of fan base to make this into an issue (like Tom Brady and the Patriots probably would have if they had lost the coin toss and the game), but this time the NFL has made enemies with a fan base that calls itself the Bills Mafia and likes to jump through flaming folding tables just because.
The rules should, and I’d like to believe will, be changed this offseason. But then again, if the NFL didn’t change overtime after a Super Bowl was decided by a coin toss (think about how ridiculous that is), it’s hard to say if the league will ever change it. It’s just sad that it had to ruin one of the greatest games in NFL history first.
NFL overtime is a crime against football itself. How many more victims will it claim before the league finally fixes its tragic flaw?
Photo Courtesy of U.S. Secretary of Defense/Flickr.
