By Dalton Del Don
This has become a hot topic after the Colts’ loss in which the NFL’s MVP never got a chance to step onto the field during the game’s final quarter. If football games are decided by offense, defense and special teams, then why does a sudden death frame often get decided without one of these aspects coming into play? Peter King vehemently argues for a change and offers some pretty compelling evidence: “So in 2008, nine of the 15 overtime games have been one-possession periods. Nine out of 15…In regular-season history, by the way, 141 games (33 percent of all games) have been won on the first possession.” Of course, he fails to offer a better alternative to the current system, because the real truth is, there isn’t one.
RotoWire’s Herb Ilk does a much better job than I could stating why the current method, while imperfect, is actually the fairest:
“While I do think the team that wins the coin toss in OT has a very slight edge, giving each team at least one possession would give a much larger edge to the second team with the ball. Why would any team ever elect to receive in OT if each team was guaranteed at least one possession? If you kick off and get a stop then you get the ball back with a chance to win with a FG. If the other team scores at all then you get the ball back knowing exactly what you need to either win or tie the game. You don’t need to worry about punting and get the advantage of planning for four downs to get 10 yards. Giving each team at least one possession in OT sounds like a good idea, but it would give an even larger advantage to the team that won the coin toss.
College gives each team a possession, but each team starts their possession with the same field position. You can’t return a turnover for a score and you can’t improve your field position on defense. This makes the concept of “at least one possession” somewhat more equal but not quite. Every college team takes the ball second if they win the coin toss because that’s where the advantage lies.
In the pros, if you took the ball second then you’d not only gain the advantage of knowing how many points you needed to score to win or tie the game, but you’d also have the chance to stop your opponent and force a punt to gain better starting field position on your possession than your opponent had to start theirs. You would also be able to get a turnover to increase your field position or even score on that turnover to end the game. There would be a HUGE advantage to starting out on defense, much more than the current system gives to the team winning the coin flip.
The current system isn’t completely fair, but it’s much more balanced than an “each team gets at least one possession” OT. If they want to go to the college system, then it would be more fair than the “at least one possession” model but would still favor the team with the last possession. Since you’d just be shifting the advantage from taking the ball first to taking the ball second, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to change the current system.”
I agree. What do you all think?
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