One teammate speaking to another. What’s the problem?
My point was more, if you think the OT rules are unfair, then don’t let the lead slip away in the last 13 seconds so you have to play OT. I agree that point has nothing to do with the fairness or unfairness of the OT rules.
Personally, I kind of like the college OT system, even before they decided to start using 2-point plays (I know a lot of people don’t, but I think it’s great fun to watch and I don’t care if it goes 6 or 7 OTs). I think a system similar to the CFL would work just fine, although I’d start the possessions at the 40 instead of the 35. Alternating possessions, you must go for two after TDs, play until somebody wins.
Oh shit, don’t let the other team score. I wonder why the Bills didn’t think that up.
That’s an excellent point, and it’s well taken. But I would also note that the Chiefs actually attempted to correct the injustice that happened to them and were denied.
But you are correct…it’s time to end this hijack.
Throughout the season, I am guessing that, more times than not, the defense stops the offense from scoring. (Does anyone have those kind of numbers?). If so, then the current overtime setup seems fair.
Defense gets worn down faster than the offense does for various reasons, which means that more scoring happens on drives later in the game. That would be a more fair source of comparison than evaluating the scoring chances of all drives. The fact that the Bills and Chiefs were scoring at will at the end had a lot to do with defense wearing out faster than offense.
But even so, having a 50/50 shot is only one kind of fairness. Flipping a coin is completely fair, but just awarding the win to the team that won the coin flip would be unsatisfying. Subjective feelings for what make for a satisfying and fair ending are perfectly valid since sports enjoyment is a subjective experience anyway.
The Bills had no way of knowing if the unfairness would be against them or for them until the coin flip. Certainly coach speak in the postgame analysis will always say “we shouldn’t have let it be decided by a coin flip” or “we shouldn’t have let it be close enough to be decided by the refs”. Those are inane and meaningless platitudes. Those of us watching at home have no idea if Buffalo or KC is the better team, and we’re unsatisfied with the way it ended. Buffalo didn’t “deserve to lose” any more than the Chiefs did for the way regulation ended.
You are correct, though this is becoming less the case over time.
According to this site, in 2020, 41.7% of drives (excluding QB kneel-down “drives”) ended in some sort of score for the offense; that was an all-time high, as in the previous decade, the number was more like 35% or so (but slowly rising); the high number for 2020 may have reflected some of the impacts of COVID protocols, due to playing at empty stadiums (where crowd noise was not a factor).
When the regular season started in 2020, defenses around the league were atrocious. Speculation was that the complete lack of a preseason and limited training camp opportunities had a greater impact on defensive personnel readiness than offensive.
Once the season got underway things normalized a bit, but that rocky start really skewed the statistics for the entire year. It was pretty jarring though.
My WAG is that with defense being more reactionary than offense, it is just harder to do. The offense is in control more than the defense, which is why some of the rules try to even things out a bit (like the offensive line being unable to flinch before the snap without drawing a penalty, while the defense can move all they want as long as they don’t cross into the neutral zone during the snap or go offside before the snap). I’d also argue that defensive players really have to support each other more, as tackling and coverage is more often a two-person job than running, catching, and blocking (aside from having to double-team a monster defensive lineman, which is not the norm). Defensive players really need to learn how to read each other and predict each other. Offensive players can more often be solitary stars.
Changing back to an earlier subject, because I want to address the people that called for a squib kick as time-killing strategy. We had a case here in Chicago, in 2008, where the Bears took a one-point lead with only eleven seconds remaining–two fewer than yesterday.
Coach Lovie Smith ordered a squib kick. The opposition Falcons returned it from the 34 to the 44 (five seconds), completed a 24-yard pass (five more seconds), and kicked a 48-yard field goal to win the game.
Afterward Smith was of course damned to hot hell for the squib kick, which gave the Falcons such good field position. There’s no perfect kickoff in that situation. A high pooch kick can be fair caught, giving a result similar to a touchback. A low squib kick can be fielded by an up man and returned for good field position, as happened to the Bears. In effect the kickoff took the place of the first play that Kansas City ran yesterday. Bottom line, you have to make a defensive stop and there’s no way to strategize around it.
You forgot the other kind of kick, where the ball is kicked to just outside of the end zone. It can’t be a touchback if it doesn’t reach the end zone, and it’s either downed where it stops, giving you terrible field position, or the returner picks it up and runs with it, burning valuable time in an effort to at least get the ball to the 25 to match what a touchback would give. Yes, there is the chance the player could run it back with a huge return but if your special teams folks are that bad you’re basically doomed anyway.
A simple kick short of the end zone isn’t that hard since I typically see it done successfully at least once per game. It should be a reliable tool for any competent kicker.
"Any Coach that calls for a Squib Kick when up by 3 or less should be FIRED on the spot.
How many games have been lost because a squib kick gave the opposing team field position with the ball near midfield? Lovie in his infinite retardation had Gould squib the kickoff and gave the Falcons the ball at the 44 yard line, the 44 yard line!! , which set up the inevitable 26 yard completion. From there it was an easy 47 yard chip shot in the dome for Elam. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
What’s more likely, giving up a 90 yard kickoff return or giving up a 20 yard completion? If it the former, you have some serious issues with your kickoff coverage unit. And it’s not like a squib kick has a zero percent chance of a TD return anyways. What a fucking idiot."
I alluded to this in an earlier post. A kick that lands inside the ten yard line almost has to be fielded by the return man. If he lets it bounce, he runs the risk of the ball not going into the end zone. So he has to catch and return the kick, which will run 5-6 seconds off the clock.
Agreed. Any kicker in today’s NFL can do this.
Regression to the mean is right.
I wondered if anyone would notice. Going from 6-0 to 0-4 is about as regressive as you can get.
Can fair catch it, I believe? Although that leaves the offense in more of hole, I presume that is what the Chiefs would have done, since any attempted return would likely have burned up all of the clock.
Yes, but the ball is placed at the spot of the catch. Assuming, for instance, that’s the 10-yard line, that would be another 10-15 yards the Chiefs would have had to gain to get into FG position. They only had 3 seconds on the clock when they snapped the last play, so it’s doubtful they would have had enough time.
Either way, KC is in too big of a hole to make the needed yardage, IMO.
I dunno; didn’t they have one timeout they didn’t even use?
Apparently, this is a real worship announcement from a KC-area church:
And, a kickoff that isn’t fielded, and hasn’t touched the ground in the end zone (or gone out of bonds) is a live ball, and can be recovered by the kicking team.
(I suspect that everyone in this thread is well aware of this, but I figured it might need to be pointed out, as another reason why a kickoff needs to be fielded by the receiving team.)