While the NFL owners have kicked the can down the road on both changing the playoff seeding procedures and getting rid of the "tush push," they did approve the rules change requested by the Super Bowl champion Eagles and guaranteed both teams at least one possession in overtime.
However, the extra period will remain at 10 minutes — virtually guaranteeing that at least some games will end in a tie in 2025 and beyond. But the hallowed coin toss to start overtime would remain an issue, since the winner therein might be tempted to hog the ball for the entire 10 minutes, in order to score on the final play of the overtime.
Of course the main "side effect" of several tie games per season is that races for division titles and/or playoff berths are far more likely to be decided by half-game margins; e.g., a 10-7 team getting a wild card over a 9-7-1 team. In 1973 — the last year before overtime in the regular season was implemented in 1974 — there were seven tie games, or 3.57% of the 196 games played that year. With the NFL regular-season schedule now consisting of 272 games, this means that nine or 10 tie games per season are likely in 2025 and beyond.
(A way to even further simplify things would be to bring back the tiebreakers that existed from 1970 through 1977 for three-way — or now, even four-way — ties; i.e., if three division winners — or three wild card candidates — in the same conference all finish with the same record, and Team A went 1-0 among the three tied teams, with Team B 1-1 and Team C 0-1, the teams were seeded in that order; however, if one of the teams did not play either of the other two, then head-to-head cannot be applied. This will make it much less likely that "strength of victory" — which most observers confuse with "margin of victory" — would need to be invoked.)
The Cowboys got jobbed big time in 2014, when they, the Packers, and the Seahawks all finished 12-4, and Dallas beat Seattle and Seattle beat Green Bay, while Dallas and Green Bay did not play each other; but since Seattle had a 10-2 record within the conference while Green Bay was 9-3 and Dallas 8-4, the Cowboys got the 3-seed when they would have gotten the 1-seed under the original format.
And while the owners are still debating over whether to change the seeding in the playoffs, they should also debate about making it more difficult for a team that finishes third in their division to get in. This can simply be done by using division finish as the first tiebreaker — the same way they have decided to continue to debate about letting second-place teams host playoff games (in the NBA, a team can win their division and not make the playoffs at all — not even advancing to the ingenious "play-in," which the NHL has chosen not to implement).
Naturally, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell couldn't resist making another push for an 18-game regular season. But if it happens, the owners are going to have to decide where to fit the 18th game into the schedule: One way to do it would be to abolish the 17th game that was inserted into the interconference schedule in 2021 and transfer it to the intraconference schedule, then go back to the intraconference format that prevailed from 1988 through 1994, with first-place teams from the previous season's standings playing two first-place teams, one second-place team, and one third-place team (besides playing all four teams from one division within the same conference every three years); the second-place teams playing one first-place team, two second-place teams, and one fourth-place team; the third-place teams playing one-first-place team, two third-place teams, and one fourth-place team; and the fourth-place teams playing one second-place team, one third-place team, and two fourth-place teams.
That will mean that teams would henceforth play 14 intraconference games per season instead of only 12 — making it more likely that conference record will settle any ties, especially if the 1970-77 rules are put back in place.
Since Las Vegas puts out "proposition" lines on everything, look for the opening over/under on the number of tie games in the 2025 season to be set at 8 — which is perfect, in that it means that about half the teams will have played a tie game and the other half will have not.
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