Here's my understanding of NFL overtime rules throughout the years:

1. For a while there was no overtime in the NFL.
2. A little bit before I was born, they added a sudden death overtime period. A regular season game could technically still end in a tie but it was uncommon. There's a coin flip, the team that won the flip typically chose to receive the ball (unless they were the Detroit Lions), and if they scored just a field goal they won the whole game.
3. Kickers got to be too good and this sudden death period resembled Power Slap, a sport where the winner is largely decided by a coin flip. Power Slap did not exist when this change was made; I just wanted to note how dumb of an idea it is. Anyway, overtime was changed so that if the team that won the coin toss scored a field goal on their possession then the other team would get a possession. If there was a tie after that possession then it's back to a real sudden death. If the team that won the coin toss scored a touchdown on their first possession then the game was over.
4. The NFL rules are skewed in favor of the offense. You can call this an opinion if you like. So under these new overtime rules, quarterbacks playing against exhausted defenses found it relatively easy to score a touchdown on the first possession. The NFL wanted to ensure both teams had a possession so the rules were changed again to allow the team losing the coin flip to always have a possession. This also changed how teams decided to kick or receive based on the coin flip.

I'm not including turnover or safety scenarios in any of these. I could have an LLM fill in all the details but that's not how I roll. After all these changes it seems like there is still unhappiness with the system. Some prefer the college system which I don't understand that well. I didn't go to football schools. Well, a QB from my undergraduate college is/was an NFL head coach but it was a Division III school. I attended graduate school at University of Illinois: Chicago which hasn't had a football team in my lifetime. So I never got into college football.

Meanwhile soccer, or real football to many readers, uses a shootout system to break ties. Five offensive players try to kick a goal, 1:1 against the goalie. Whoever has the most points after those five turns wins, otherwise it's another five turns (as I understand it).

I get why soccer uses this system instead of another period. Compared to football there are effectively no breaks and the players are always moving. I'm not going to argue whether one sport takes more physical ability than the other, I'm not qualified to. As a casual fan, neither of these systems is perfect.

The NFL overtime system is very reactive. It's too easy to score in overtime so they keep tweaking it every time it's broken. On the positive side, it involves the entire team and mostly resembles the rest of the game.

The soccer system is a 1:1 matchup. It does not resemble the original game. It is very suspenseful and fun though. Some would like to see football adopt a similar system, to replicate these nail-biter endings.

Does everyone know that Sharp Shot on the Intellivision already figured out an exciting NFL overtime system?

For those unfamiliar, which is maybe everyone, Sharp Shot is a two player Intellivision game containing four brief mini-games. I ranked it #52. One of these mini-games is a 3-on-4 football competition.

The premise is simple - the center snaps the ball to the quarterback and immediately has to block the rusher. There are two receivers and two defenders. The quarterback has to try to make as many touchdown passes as they can within the time limit. Quarterback sneaks are not allowed.

Being an early video game, there are some limitations and oddities:

• Again, the quarterback can never cross the line of scrimmage. The quarterback can't run at all really.
• The rusher always gets past the center after a fixed amount of time and immediately reaches the quarterback, who has no way of escaping.
• The defense runs some weird zone that would never work in the real world.
• The clock is always running.
• 3-on-4 isn't exactly fair.
• Interceptions are allowed but they turn the center into the most agile player on the team.

I think this could be adapted to a 3-on-3 overtime that would be extremely exciting while still resembling the original format of the game.

The rules would be:

• It's a 30 second overtime. The clock runs when a play is running and stops when a point is scored or the ball is downed.
• The quarterback can never cross the line of scrimmage.
• I would eliminate the center. The quarterback starts with the ball and when the play is whistled live the clock starts running.
• There is a rusher, who has to wait X seconds before they can cross the line of scrimmage. 3 seems like a good number but this would be worked out in trials. To avoid injuries a two-hand touch should count as a sack.
• There are two receivers and two defenders. What position they normally play doesn't matter. There are many tight ends who would be obvious picks in a setting like this, for example.
• The offense gets a point for a touchdown pass or defensive penalty. There would have to be some contact allowed but clear holding or pass interference would be penalties. So would an early rush.
• The defense gets a point for an interception. Offensive penalties do not score defensive points; they just waste valuable time.
• All reviews come from the booth, preferably in under 2 seconds. Really, all reviews in the entire game should be instantaneous ones from the booth that only overturn clearly obviously bad calls.
• Each team gets a possession. If they are tied after that then repeat.

This could also be a 4-on-4 game. Anything larger than that seems like too much.

One of the goals of this idea is reducing injuries. There should not be any high impact plays required. As noted, tackling the quarterback isn't necessary to end the play (and should be discouraged). The receivers would not ever be tackled unless they catch the pass outside of the end zone. There is no tackling on an interception either, the play is simply over.

This format would also be fairly quick. With clock stoppages these 30 second shootouts would go about 5 minutes. That's it, a fast-paced competition between the best players on each team to break the tie.

There are some downsides to this idea. We can all think of quarterback/receiver combinations that would score at least 7 times in this format. That might feel like it is going on forever. As someone who's lived in the Chicago area for a long time, I can also think of quarterback/receiver combinations that couldn't score once in this format if you gave them an hour. This system is biased against quarterbacks with strong rushing skills, it essentially takes away half of their skills.

I'm not going to argue this is perfect - I just think it would be fun, suspenseful, and over mercifully fast.

Tags: Intellivision

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