In Week 11, the Raiders won the hallowed coin toss to start overtime in their game at Denver, after 60 minutes of regulation play ended with the two teams tied, 16-16 — and sure enough, they scored a touchdown on their first possession, giving them a 22-16 victory over the Broncos, leaving both teams with identical 3-7 records.
But the next time this happens, the game might have much greater implications so far as the playoffs are concerned.
Surely, there must be a better, fairer way to do this — and it turns out that there actually is.
Since the NFL changed its opening coin-toss rules in 2008, allowing teams to let the team winning said coin toss "defer," and choose to get the ball to start the second half on offense, teams winning the opening coin toss have elected to defer 92% of the time, obviously because doing so gave them the opportunity to have two consecutive possessions — the first at the end of the first half, and the second at the beginning of the second half — therefore giving them the chance to score 14 (or conceptually, even 16) unanswered points, and potentially turn an entire game around.
But what if a provision was added stating that whichever team got the ball first in the first half also got the ball first in overtime if the game goes into overtime?
Naturally, a caveat would need to be included — and that caveat would be as follows: if the team getting the ball first — and therefore got the ball first in overtime — kicked a field goal, its opponents must score a touchdown on their ensuing possession, otherwise they lose the game; and if the team getting the ball first scores a touchdown, they must kick a PAT (going for two is barred); and if their opponents respond with a touchdown, they must go for two, unless the team getting the ball first missed their PAT, in which case the second team would be permitted to kick a game-winning PAT (if the team getting the ball first in overtime missed their PAT and then their opponents scored a touchdown and missed their PAT as well, the game would end in a tie — during the regular season only).
If neither team scores on their (first) possession in overtime, the game ends in a tie — except in postseason games, where the teams alternate possessions until one team has scored more points than the other, with the same stipulations as to going for a win rather than a tie pertaining.
(However, if either team fumbles, or throws an interception, and it is returned for a touchdown, the opposing team wins; this is also applicable in the event of a safety).
What must be emphasized here is that the second team to possess the ball would always get to "go for it" on fourth down, regardless of how many yards they need to gain to get a first down or their field position, thus giving them a conceptual advantage that the first team to have possession does not enjoy.
In the event that such a rule change were to be implemented, the percentage of teams deferring upon winning the opening-game coin toss would definitely decline sharply — probably to somewhere around 50 percent.
For the first season or two (and maybe longer), it will be anybody's guess as to what would be regarded as more important: getting the kickoff to start the second half, or getting the kickoff to start overtime, in the event that the game actually goes into overtime?
And how the new overtime rules proposed herein would affect the winning percentage of teams getting the ball first in overtime (the number of tie games during the regular season does not figure to be affected significantly with these proposed overtime rules — and so what if there is a marginal increase in tie games? In that case, battles for division titles, playoff berths, and playoff seeds would then be more likely to be decided by the margin of half a game, rather than by tie-breaking procedures that at least as often as not give the nod to the wrong team) only adds to the delightfully delicious dilemma of whether teams who win the coin toss to start the game should elect to receive, or defer.
Enhancing the role of strategy in games cannot help but make the game more compelling — and will lead to endless conversations around the proverbial water cooler the day after.
Isn't that what any sport should want?
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