On June 8, 1966, following intense and secret negotiations, the NFL and the AFL agreed to merge. Though the corporate aspects of the merger took effect when Congress passed legislation granting professional football the same antitrust exemption that baseball has enjoyed since 1922 (doing this on October 21, 1966), the commingling of the actual teams did not begin until 1970, when the Colts, Browns, and Steelers agreed to move to the new AFC, thus balancing out the two conferences at 13 teams each.
In the first four years of the new alignment, 29 of the NFL's 728 games (or 3.98%) ended in a tie — and this was somehow seen as unacceptable despite the fact that in 1967 nine of the pre-merger NFL's 112 games had ended tied (8.04%).
So on April 25, 1974, the owners voted to implement a 15-minute sudden-death overtime period for all games that were tied after regulation play (the overtime was shortened to 10 minutes in 2017).
Yes, this solved the "tie problem" (there have been only 29 tie games, or 0.24%, since 1974) — but it created a far more serious problem in its place: where from 1970 through 1973, all inclusive, not a single team had been deprived of a playoff berth on tiebreakers, from 1974 to the present, 67 teams have — or 1.31 per season.
And very often, the tiebreakers themselves are grossly unfair: say that, in a season when the AFC dominated the interconference season series, two NFC teams tie for a playoff berth. If they did not play each other that year, it would come down to which team had a better record within the conference — thus rewarding the team that did better against weaker competition!
Furthermore, allowing a few games to end in a tie every year means that the tiebreakers will come into play considerably less often. Instead of having three teams in the same conference finishing 10-7, you might instead have one team finishing 10-6-1 and another team finishing 10-7, with the third team at 9-7-1.
So far as changing the rules for overtime: yes, the rules should be uniform for both the regular season and the playoffs, with both teams guaranteed at least one possession in the extra period, except if the team that possesses the ball first uses up the entire 10 minutes before scoring a touchdown or kicking a field goal — with exquisite strategical ramifications possible; e.g., if the team to possess the ball first advances it across mid-field and uses up a lot of time doing it (as a strong run-oriented team like the Ravens or Eagles might do), does the defense then go into all-out blitz mode?
And don't expect the owners to even ask the NFLPA to approve going back to a 15-minute overtime, because they have their minds so set on the 18-game schedule that they can taste it.
With both teams guaranteed a possession in overtime, the number of tie games will no doubt increase — but very likely by just the right amount to have the desired effect of having many if not most races for division titles and/or playoff berths get decided by half-game margins, even if what appears to be motivating a possible change is the fact that the percentage of overtime coin-toss winners have won 56.8% of all regular-season games since 2017, compared with 55.4% from 2001 through 2011.
Talk about doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
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