OT? OT! Football overtime proposal: spot & choose
"Spot and chooses" is an old idea for overtime but is now being proposed by John Harbaugh's coaching staff of the Baltimore Ravens.
Why not just go with the college version of overtime? It seems like the fairest option without complicating things further
Agree, except maybe start 5-10 yds further back than college.
I detest college overtime.
You start practically in range of field goals. There's no return game. It takes most normal football strategy about field position out of the game. It's more prone to go to 3, 4, 5 overtimes and be crazy long. Etc etc
I'm ok with the no return game - OT needs to give each team a fair shot to win the game and to end it rather quickly. I think actually I'd go the other way - no FGs. Only TDs and 2P from the first OT, and from the 3rd OT just dueling 2p conversions. Also OT scoring should be in brackets
Or make it that any missed kick ends the game to strongly discourage field goals.
I might go the other way actually, all 4th downs must end in a kick. Would take care of the 2nd team getting a free extra down if they're behind a TD, and too many TDs in OT anyway.
I like this. They really need to negate the coin flip's impact on overtime.
Which is why you should start from the 35. Or, start where they start now and eliminate FGs as an option.
I also like the soccer PK style...put an offense and a defense at each end of the field and it's best of 5 for 2 pt conversions. After 5, if there's a tie, whoever wins the next frame, wins the game, just like soccer.
What do you do if you have someone who plays both ways? Well, he's got to haul ass to the other end to get in the play. I also like this for the fans because OT doesn't mean half of the stadium sees no action in front of them.
Normally I'd agree that simpler is better.
However, I do like the idea of something more for coaches to strategize—and as Gobluem says below—something more for the internets to bitch about.
I think it's worth it just for the post-game armchair coaching takes alone!
But it's a fascinating concept, I think it is really cool. I'm with Belichick, I'd favor the non-sudden death version. I like the ability to have overtime be similar to the normal game, and I also like the idea of a defined time in terms of TV flow and such
College football is the worst for this, it's akin to penalty kicks for a soccer match
It'd definitely be more fun and strategic. I'm personally a fan of the tug-of-war / hot potato overtime model (placing the ball at the 50 and giving teams 4 alternating downs to "push" the ball into the opponent's half of the field), but I admit that's more of a mini-game and less like an actual game of football.
But I think the best solution I've heard for NFL overtime rules is sudden death, but don't reset possession for overtime: simply transition from the 4th quarter to overtime as you would from the 3rd quarter to the 4th.
For example, the Chargers and Chiefs are playing and the Chargers are winning by a touchdown with 3 minutes left, but Mahomes drives the length of a field for a tying score with 30 seconds left. The Chargers receive the football and complete two passes, and now have a first-and-10 at midfield, but there are only 6 seconds left. Now they have to attempt either a +60 yard field goal or a hail mary because there's a completely arbitrary and random change of possession coming.
But if the game simply transitions into sudden-death overtime, the Chargers can keep running their normal offense, pick up two first downs, and attempt a 40-yard field goal for the win.
By maintaining possession, you'd eliminate coin-toss luck, mandatory possessions, TDs are auto-wins, and a whole bunch of other nonsensical rules that attempt to reintroduce fairness.
It's interesting, but I suspect some analytic guy will determine the "ideal" spot to pick and then all NFL coaches will choose it forever.
I wouldn't worry about that at all
Analytics say to go for it on 4th down WAY more than any coaches actually do
Coaches deviate from analytics all the time
This would be new though. They wouldn't have a century of conventional wisdom weighing on everything.
It's like hitting on a 16 vs a face-up 7. All the analytics say do it, but so many choose not to. People like striking out looking sometimes more than swinging.
That's because analytics don't usually account for the biggest wildcard of all. Humans.
Sometimes 4th and 1 is the easiest thing in the world and sometimes it's the impossible. Humans can feel it by watching the teams on the field and no computer in the world is ever going to capture that.
The best coaches can see that calculus well, the others coach for the Lions.
As the linked article points out, others factors would come into play: weather conditions, the strength of your own offense and defense, strength of opponent's offense and defense, kicker's accuracy, "momentum" for those who believe in it.
That's likely too many factors to fit in a computation.
I like the idea of a soccer/NBA-style solution to OT. Make it a set length and play it as an extra "quarter". Whoever is leading at the end wins the game.
The "spot and choose" idea is...eh. I think spotting teams would always choose the 10 yard line (or however far back they could), and regardless of the choosing team decision that means the OT starts 90 yards from the endzone. This discourages points from being scored at a time when you want to encourage points to decide an outcome. Especially if the OT qaurter is condensed in time to like 5-10 minutes total gametime.
Agree. I think you set a time, probably 7-10 minutes and then keep playing. If it's tied at the end, it's a tie. I don't think you can just go on forever due to safety concerns. One tweak I would make would be to go Canadian style and only allow three downs in overtime. Would make it really hard for someone to just eat the whole OT by hanging on to the ball.
If hockey and basketball can have continuous OT, then football can too. Players are only playing one side of the ball and have plenty of time to rest between plays and possessions... as far as I'm aware, nothing is more inherently more dangerous than playing a football game in OT vs the 1st quarter.
Soccer cannot go on forever unless they change the substitution rule and for baseball, you can go for a while but you'll eventually run out of pitchers, which is suboptimal.
Yeah I think something like that should be done to discourage/limit being able to eat clock in OT.
My other idea is to compress the field. The college OT ain't perfect but it is pretty damn exciting. Maybe for the NFL the 25 yard line is way too close. Ok then, how about teams start at the 50, or their own 40? This would also help get points on the board faster without being too gimmicky like college.
10 minute period. No kickoffs: Both teams start from the 25. Whoever is winning at the end of the period is the winner. If it is tied, the game continues from where the ball was, and it is sudden death.
I like it
paper, scissors, rock..... that eliminates any chance of serious injury
Al Borges would always choose Rock on that one.
Interesting proposal but it should also be noted that Mike Florio is a horrible human being and all the players in the NFL know it. Yoder may have higher standards of journalistic integrity.
All the arguments about college overtime "not including all facets of the game" are silly. You've already played a full game to a tie. At this point you need to have a winner.
Basketball has the best overtime, because you just play 5 more minutes and see who wins. With Football you COULD do that, but no one seems to want to play another full 15 minutes with the possibility that you might even have to keep going.
The college model, to me, is fine. Sure, it is a battle of (mostly) red-zone offense and defense. But I'm fine with that. Sudden death in football has always been dumb IMO because so much is determined by who gets the ball first.
The current NFL system is somewhat silly, but better than the pure sudden-death they had before.
If they don't want to just do a full 15-minute quarter and just see who is ahead, the college system would be better than what they currently have IMO.
"Sudden death in football has always been dumb IMO because so much is determined by who gets the ball first."
Leave it to the Lions to have had a head coach who chose the wind instead of the ball in overtime.
With the rule change mandating two possessions, they dropped the coin toss advantage from 59% to about 53%. I think they could hit 50% if they moved the touchback spot five yards.
The pick the spot idea... feels a little unnecessary. If you stop a team on its first possession, you win about 2/3 of the time under the new system. Teams will probably settle on offering a yard line very, very close to what it is now.
The percentage of expected ties increased quite a bit when they dropped overtime to ten minutes. Since no one particularly likes ties in the standings, the players must feel that these extra-long games are not cool at all. The league probably doesn't much like them, either, because either you're cutting away from an overtime game because of rights issues (fans hate that) or running a night game far too late. So the college model, which can produce some seriously long overtimes, isn't going to appeal to them.
I'm OK with the current system. The possession idea helped with the coin toss issue and clearly they don't want extra-long games. Mostly, I'm just glad they don't do something truly dumb like hockey or soccer and have the kickers duel with field goals after a certain point.