The NFL’s spring meetings are in full swing, and while the jury is still out on the celebration rules, one thing is for certain: the amount of time spent in overtime will be reduced to ten minutes instead of fifteen.
The NFL had two tie games last year, a bout between the Seahawks and Cardinals ended up without a winner and the duel between the Bengals and the Redskins ended without a victor.
Make no mistake – these changes will only create more tie games. It doesn’t take Sabermetrics or complex stats to see that cutting the amount of time teams are given to score by 1/3rd would lead to less potential scoring.
https://twitter.com/SInow/status/792847804322369537
The NFL’s overtime is already fundamentally broken. The team that wins the coin flip has a chance to end the game then and there with no rebuttal from the opposing team, if they score a touchdown. Cutting five minutes from an already broken system isn’t fixing the problem, it’s breaking it further, just now the players will be at a slightly diminished risk of injury. If you’re that concerned with player safety though, don’t play 16 game regular seasons with 4 preseason games, or just eliminate overtime in the regular season entirely. Scrap Thursday games for players who played in Sunday games the week before. Don’t give people this, which makes the issue of tying worse.
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