INDIANAPOLIS — The NFL and its competition committee will look at potentially adjusting the league’s regular-season overtime rules that would, in effect, lessen the advantage of a team winning the overtime coin toss.
One of the strongest ideas for the NFL is to have the regular-season overtime rules mirror the current postseason overtime rules with the ability to still end in a tie. In the playoffs, overtime is a 15-minute period where each team has the chance to possess the ball.
“Overtime is one [topic] that, universally, the committee thought, ‘We need to address this,” said NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent.
In 2024, teams that won the coin toss in regular-season overtimes wound up winning 12 out of 16 games. There were just 11.6 plays per overtime in 2024, which was the second fewest in the past two decades.
The NFL changed the regular-season overtime rules in 2017 from 15 minutes down to 10. From 2017 through this year, the team winning the coin toss went 67-44-7 (a 59.7% win percentage.)
From 2012 until 2016, when overtime was 15 minutes, the toss-winning team went 40-38-5 for a far more equitable 51.2% win percentage.
And from 2005-2011 when the league had sudden death, the toss-winning team went 53-46-1 (53.5% win percentage.)
In 2022, following Buffalo’s playoff loss to Kansas City, the NFL team owners approved changes to postseason OT rules that would allow both teams an opportunity to possess the football. But those rules applied only to the postseason.
The current regular-season OT rules give what some in the league consider to be too great an advantage.
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