NFL postpones decision on shortening OT periods until spring meeting

At the NFL owners meetings this week, the league postponed a decision to once again change the overtime formula. The competition committee proposed a change for the 2017 season to change all regular season and preseason games to 10-minute overtime periods, rather than the 15 minutes that’s been the standard.

The proposal has been tabled for the time being, according to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio. The proposal needed 24 votes in favor to pass, but nine teams opposed the updated rule, so it was just one vote short of being approved.

Adam Schefter provided a timetable for when it will resurface.

If the rule is passed in the future, playoff games and the Super Bowl will continue to have 15-minute overtimes.

This isn’t the first time this decade that the NFL has considered tinkering with overtime rules. Starting in the 2010 playoffs, the format changed from simple sudden death to a slightly more complex setup.

If the coin toss winner doesn’t score a touchdown on its first possession, the next team has a chance to win the game by scoring points of any kind. This new rule was only used in the playoffs before getting expanded to the regular season in 2012.

Cutting down playing time by five minutes is appealing to coaches in terms of player safety. That’s a primary reason Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin supported the change.

“Because both teams have to play the following week. And maybe in some hypothetical instances, a short week,” Tomlin said. “So, obviously we want to have clarity in terms of the victor, but if we can reduce that amount of time and get out of the stadium, and doing so with fewer snaps, I think that is beneficial to both teams, regardless of outcome.”

The game can still end in a tie if teams are still deadlocked at the end of the period. Last year we saw two tied games in the same season, a rarity in the modern NFL era. If overtime does get cut back by five minutes when this proposal is revisited, teams will have less time to create a scoring opportunity, so it’s entirely possible we’ll see even more ties in the future.

Still, Houston Texans head coach Bill O’Brien doesn’t think that will be the case.

“I don’t think that that’s going to happen,” O’Brien said. “If you look at the stats on overtime, probably most of the overtimes are over before 10 minutes.”

Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said he won’t mind if the end result is more tied ballgames.

“Wouldn’t bother me,” Harbaugh said. “Ties, they count in the standings.”

Whether this would be good or bad for the sport remains to be seen. Considering it didn’t have enough votes to pass, teams aren’t completely sold on the idea of this change being an advantage.