On the last day of the 2022 league meetings, NFL owners voted to approve a modified version of a proposal put forth by the Philadelphia Eagles and Indianapolis Colts, which now allows both teams to have a chance to score in overtime. The modification is that the new rule applies only in the postseason, which is just fine, because the postseason was where the former rule, ending a game if the first team with the ball in overtime scores a touchdown, had led to a 10-2 overall disparity between the team taking the ball, and the team on the wrong side of that equation.
It’s past time for this modification, and the rule it replaces was weird and reactionary at best.
In the 2009 NFC Championship game, the New Orleans Saints beat the Minnesota Vikings, 31-28, on a 40-yard Garrett Hartley field goal with 10:15 left in overtime. The fact that Brett Favre wasn’t able to participate in Super Bowl XLIV caused the NFL to alter its overtime rules. Now, instead of a first-drive field goal winning the game, a team would have to score a touchdown or a safety on its first overtime drive to win, and if that team kicked a field goal, the opposing team would have an opportunity to tie or win from there.
In the last four seasons, we’ve seen two different instances in which outstanding NFL quarterbacks were denied any chance to help their teams win a playoff game in overtime, because the opponents scored touchdowns on their first drives. There was the New England Patriots beating Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs in the 2018 AFC Championship game on a 13-play, 75-yard drive that ended with a two-yard Red Burkhead touchdown run. All Mahomes could do was walk off the field, and wait until next year.
Mahomes hasn’t missed an AFC Championship game since, and one reason he made his fourth straight was his incredible performance late in the Chiefs’ 42-36 divisional round win over the Buffalo Bills. Josh Allen and his crew thought they had it won when Allen threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Gabe Davis with 13 seconds left (it was Davis’ fourth touchdown catch of the game, setting a single-game postseason record), but Mahomes countered with his own particular magic, hitting Tyreek Hill for 18 yards and Travis Kelce for 25 yards, setting up Harrison Butker’s 49-yard field goal as regulation expired.
BUTKER. GOOD FROM 49. TIE GAME. #NFLPlayoffs
📺: #BUFvsKC on CBS
📱: https://t.co/bCIjXIlFWh pic.twitter.com/BHVNy9Rkek— NFL (@NFL) January 24, 2022
And then, after the Chiefs won the toss in overtime, Allen could do nothing but watch helplessly as Mahomes engineered an eight-play, 75-yard drive that ended with an eight-yard touchdown pass to Travis Kelce.
MAHOMES TO KELCE.
THE @CHIEFS WIN THE GAME OF THE YEAR! #NFLPlayoffs #ChiefsKingdom pic.twitter.com/9eM2Ur15O0
— NFL (@NFL) January 24, 2022
So, that was two amazing quarterbacks denied any chance at winning, based on the luck of a coin toss. Does that seem fair after 60 game clock minutes of amazing play? In this case, did it make sense to slam the door in Allen’s face in a fourth quarter that featured 25 points and four lead changes in the final 1:54?
I think not.
.@PatrickMahomes left the celebration and ran across the whole field to find @JoshAllenQB.
Ultimate respect for these competitors. #NFLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/T5uEk4OXty
— NFL (@NFL) January 24, 2022
“The rules are what they are. I can’t complain about that because if it was the other way around, we’d be celebrating, too,” Allen said after the game. “It is what it is at this point. We just didn’t make enough plays tonight.”
Allen is right about that, and the Bills should have squibbed the kick with 13 seconds left to force the Chiefs’ returner to either return the ball and bleed the clock or give himself up with bad field position, but there was nothing Allen could do to counter — simply because of the luck of the draw.
After that 2018 AFC Championship game loss, the Chiefs put forth a similar proposal, only to be told that the league would spend the next year “figuring it out.”
Four years later, the NFL finally figured it out — and did the right thing. Sadly, we can’t play a couple of playoff overtimes in a retroactive fashion, but if you though the 2021 playoffs were incredible, 2022 could be even better.
