The Burning Question: How should the NFL change overtime rules?

Welcome to The Burning Question, where three of our NFL experts give their thoughts on a big talking point coming out of the past week’s football action.

It’s been said a thousand times already, but this past week’s divisional round truly was one of the greatest weekends of football ever. Every game was decided on the last play, and three of the four saw the road underdog come out on top.

One big debate coming out of this weekend, however, has been whether the overtime rules once again need to be reevaluated. The madness of the Bills/Chiefs game was arguably spoiled by the fact that it was somewhat decided by the coin flip — the Chiefs won it, obviously chose to get the ball, and proceeded to score a touchdown with the Bills having no right of reply.

Does the NFL need to change overtime rules? Should there be different rules in the postseason from regular season? How should things change? It’s time for our NFL experts — Jared Smith, Andrew Ortenberg, and Ricky Dimon — to give their thoughts on the contentious debate.

Jared Smith: Knowledge is power

I think the overtime rules are fine. Are they perfect? No. But how do you fix them to make them fairer? For example, if the Bills received a possession after the Chiefs scored on Sunday night, and then scored a touchdown themselves to tie it back up, then what? The Chiefs would likely get it back and inevitably score again, and we’d be right back in the same place we started, where the Chiefs got an extra possession in overtime and won the game.

There’s no magic bullet to fix this process, but you can empower teams to avoid overtime altogether by giving them the knowledge well beforehand of who will have the ball first, which will in turn change their strategy during regulation. In the playoffs, it makes sense to let the home team have it first, giving them an extra edge for having the better record and being at home. If the Bills knew that in the fourth quarter on Sunday, perhaps they go for two after that final touchdown with 13 seconds left, which would have forced the Chiefs to score a touchdown, and not kick a field goal to tie the game.

Get Jared’s analysis on all the opening lines for this weekend’s NFL Conference Championship games

Andrew Ortenberg: Don’t put yourself in that position

If you don’t want to get screwed by an overtime coin toss, don’t go to overtime. If the Bills had just prevented the Chiefs from getting into field goal range in 13 seconds, we wouldn’t be talking about this right now. The bottom line is that the current system isn’t great, but there aren’t too many better alternatives. And the current narratives ignore the fact that defense is a part of the game too.

Offense isn’t inherently a bigger part of your team than defense. It’s not like Buffalo didn’t get a chance to win the game in overtime. Their defense had that chance and they failed. It’s disappointing that Josh Allen didn’t get to see the field in overtime, but that’s the fault of the defense, not the rules. I’m not mortally opposed to changing the rules, but I’m not clamoring for it like some others.

Since the rules were changed, teams in the playoffs are 10-1 when winning the coin toss. But that feels like a small sample size fluke, and not something we should read too much into. During the regular season, teams that win the coin toss are winning the game less than 53 percent of the time.

Read Andrew’s betting breakdown from one of the craziest NFL weekends in history

Ricky Dimon: Definitely should be changed

Sunday’s game doesn’t really have anything to do with the answer to this question. The answer to this question has been “yes” for many years; decades, in fact! What happened in Bills vs Chiefs simply confirmed what we already knew.

I really shouldn’t have to make an argument for changing it, because it can be summed up in one word: fairness.

Instead, it’s more effective to debunk the arguments against changing it.

The only reason why this overtime rule might seem fair to some is that it was recently changed from straight-up sudden death (even a field goal on the first possession wins) to the other team getting a chance to answer if the receiving team kicks a field goal instead of scoring a touchdown. Yes, that was an improvement to the rule. But that simply makes the rule less bad; it doesn’t make it good. And even though it’s less bad, it’s still terrible. Consider this: the baseball equivalent would be something like if the road team hits a home run in the top of the 10th inning, the game is over right then and there and the home team doesn’t even get to bat. How ridiculous would that be?!

Others will probably argue that the NFL is just trying to shorten games and also minimize injuries. Well, the NFL doesn’t have a problem with games being too long. That’s MLB’s problem. The NFL isn’t playing 4-hour snooze-fests; the NFL is playing football. Nobody is complaining about games being too long. Also, the league just expanded seasons to 18 weeks! Clearly it’s not too worried about too much football causing too many injuries. Every team in the NFL now plays 17 games. I’m pretty sure one more possession in one overtime game isn’t going to make much of a difference!

I’m not even going to get into the stats of how often teams that win the OT coin toss win the game, because it doesn’t matter (it’s something like 91 percent, but even if it was 2 percent the argument would be the same). What matters is common sense. One team gets a chance to score and the other doesn’t. It’s just not fair.

Make sure you read our full game previews for both of this Sunday’s Championship games!

Pickswise is the home of free NFL Picks and NFL Odds. Check out the latest NFL Prop Bets and NFL Parlays as well as expert NFL Underdog Picks and NFL Computer Picks.