When it comes to whether Rich McKay and Dean Blandino believe that a reduced overtime period will result in more ties, Ty, we have a tie.
On Thursday, the Competition Committee chairman downplayed the risk of more teams having win-lose-draw records. Sort of.
“We don’t think it will lead to more ties,” McKay said. “Could it? It could.”
On Friday’s PFT Live, NFL senior V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino admitted the obvious.
‘There’s no question that when you shorten that overtime period, the potential for ties does increase,” Blandino said. “And I don’t think we feel that ties are necessarily a bad thing. They’re certainly great for tiebreakers when it comes to postseason. But ultimately you want to have a winner in the game. But it’s about player safety. And it’s about the number of snaps that our players have to take part in in overtime games.
“We had two ties last year. One game that went down to the final second. And we really can’t control in the regular season when that team is playing again. And sometimes a team plays five quarters and then has to go back out on Thursday night. So it’s about player safety. We understand the potential for more ties, but the safety risks outweigh the potential for tie games.”
First, while the NFL may not think ties are “necessarily a bad thing,” pretty much everyone else does.
Second, more ties won’t make it “great” for tiebreakers. As ties pile up they’ll no longer be a curiosity that avoids exercises like comparing winning percentage against common opponents because more teams will have records like 9-6-1, 10-5-1, and even 7-7-2.
Third, there’s no guarantee that a shorter overtime will correlate to reduced game action. The Week Seven tie between the Seahawks and Cardinals had 36 extra snaps. The Week Eight tie between Washington and the Bengals included 41 extra snaps. Shortening overtime by five minutes doesn’t automatically mean ties will have two thirds of the snaps, since teams will try to jam in as many snaps as possible in order to break the tie.
As long, however, as it’s fewer than 36 or 41 snaps, then it will be safer than a 15-minute overtime. And that seems to be what the league wants, primarily as it relates to avoiding one of the primary criticisms of short-week football. There’s no way to know without trying it out, and that’s why the change in overtime should be adopted on a one-year basis, requiring only nine votes to end it next year instead of 24 to wipe it from the books if the reduced snaps don’t outweigh the increased ties.
Or they could adopt the PFT overtime idea, which is explained in detail in the video attached to this post, after the quote from Blandino.
