ekweizn, thanks for bringing that up. In Peter King’s SI article, he cites 2 reasons the owners voted for the change: increased accuracy of field-goal kickers and the 1993 change of moving the tee back to the 30 on kickoffs. There’s nothing that can be done about the kickers’ accuracy (and I think it’s a good thing that they’re making more of their attempts), but it’s child’s play to fix the second.
If they point to better field position as a cause of the OT disparity (and at least King certainly does), then move the kickoff tee forward again to the 35 - put the returner further back on his end, and you won’t have the offense starting on the 40 (on average) anymore.
I’m not certain why they added a potentially confusing and ambiguous rule just to the playoffs when there’s an easier fix.
I don’t care for the rule change and I 100% oppose bringing it to the regular season.
Remember, the NFL won’t cut away from your local team’s telecast. So, you could be sitting there watching a meaningless game late in the season dragging on into OT while the late game is already halfway through the first quarter.
I just don’t understand why they couldn’t simply set a fixed time for overtime, vs. sudden death. Not only would it do a better job of ensuring both teams have a chance to score, but it would call for clock management, which sudden death completely ignores.
I 'spose they certainly could, but then there’d either be a delay as they changed the uprights for the OT or the narrower uprights would affect the entire game. They probably don’t want such a momentum break and they certainly don’t want lower scoring games, so I don’t know if this is a workable solution.
That sums it up for me. Having different rules for the playoffs is moronic and so is having different rules for different teams depending on who has the ball. I thought this problem appeared only after they moved the kickoff to the 35 from the 30, so just move it back to the 30. Or make them play the whole quarter if you have to. This seems like the worst way to handle this.
Snickers, you said you like FG kickers’ increased accuracy, and that’s a fine opinion, but if I had my druthers the importance of FGs in the game would be decreased. As you noted it’d be silly and impractical to reduce the width of the uprights during the game, however, I’d be perfectly happy with the powers that be reducing the goal posts’ width for each and every game, OT or not, regular season or not. YMMV.
They don’t, though. The only difference is that in the regular season, you have a tie after 15 minutes, and in the playoffs you keep going. The game is played in exactly the same manner; the difference is that the tie has to be broken, so the action continues.
This is more important than the 59% win rate of the winner of the flip. If a team wins the toss, fails to score, than wins the game on a later possession, the arguement about both teams touching the ball is not relevant. Therefore the statement stating the the winner of the flip wins the game 59% of the time has no real meaning. I wouldn’t call 35% (that’s how often the other team even gain posession) a troubling rate.
There is no overwhelming advantage to winning the toss…unless the other team has a bad defense…or you have a great kicker…or the wind is at your back…or ect… We’ve done this before and stats bear out the slightest advantage to winning the toss…nothing worth changing the rules for.
Best option here is to leave it alone. To insist upon a change, then move the kickoff back to the 30, which would increrase the chances of the other team getting the ball a little. This rule change is moronic, and it troubles me that it passed by an overwhelming majority (28-4.)
They’ve already changed the rules about balls used for kicking (maybe a decade or so ago). It used to be that kickers were allowed to use balls that have been “broken in” a bit (making them rounder, and easier to kick); now, kickers have to use brand-new, never-used balls (colloquially called “K-balls”, because they’re stamped with a K to indicate what they are to be used for).
Even with that change, kickers are still much more accurate, to a greater distance, than they were a generation ago.
I always thought moving the kickoff back would be enough to level the playing field. My “fun” idea was the loser of the toss gets the opportunity to decide on the line of scrimmage (or kickoff spot, if you want special teams in this), and winner of toss decides whether to accept or defer. Kind of the football version of “I cut, you choose.”
Basically, the first team to play offense has to go the length of the field to win, but if it fails to score, then the other team only has to get within FG range to win. Put another way, if the first team has the ball on the opponent’s 25 and it’s fourth down, it can’t kick for the win, but if the second team is in that situation (and the first team has not scored), it can.