As the NFL world turns its attention to Indianapolis for the NFL scouting combine, league executives are also meeting to discuss proposed rule changes for the upcoming season.
One change that’s being considered has to do with the regular season’s overtime rule.
“It’s time to rethink the overtime rule,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s vice president of football operations, said Wednesday via ESPN.
As it currently stands in the NFL’s regular season, there is one ten-minute overtime period. If the receiving team scores a touchdown, the game is over. However, if they kick a field goal, the other team has an opportunity to score. Before the rule change in 2017, it was a sudden-death period, where even a field goal would have ended the game.
In the postseason, both teams get the ball regardless of what the receiving team does.
According to the NFL’s research, the rule change has actually led to the receiving team winning more often than it did during the sudden-death period.
From 2017 to 2024, receiving teams won 56.8% of games in overtime, compared to 55.4% from 2001 to 2011.
Some of the solutions that have been proposed include changing the regular season rules to the overtime rules and/or extending the period to 15 minutes.
The NFL’s overtime rules have long been the subject of scrutiny from the fanbase. Mandating that both teams get the ball, like the league does in the playoffs and like college football has done since 1995.
