INDIANAPOLIS — The NFL is considering making changes to its regular-season overtime rules. The main goal is to reduce the advantage that comes with winning the overtime coin toss. Recently, the competition committee discussed the idea of aligning regular-season overtime rules more closely with the current postseason rules. This would still allow games to end in a tie, but it would give both teams a chance to possess the ball during overtime.
“Overtime is one [topic] that, universally, the committee thought, ‘We need to address this,'” said NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent. The data from the 2024 season shows that teams winning the coin toss in regular-season overtimes were successful 12 out of 16 times. This statistic highlights how big of an advantage winning the toss can be.
During the 2024 regular season, games only saw an average of 11.6 plays per overtime, which is the second fewest in the last twenty years. The NFL changed its overtime rules back in 2017, reducing the overtime period from 15 minutes to just 10. Since then, the team that has won the coin toss has come away victorious 67 times, with a total of 44 losses and 7 ties. That’s a win percentage of 59.7%. This contrasts sharply with the 51.2% win percentage during the previous 15-minute overtime structure from 2012 to 2016, where the toss-winning teams had a record of 40 wins, 38 losses, and 5 ties.
In the period from 2005 to 2011, under the sudden death rules, the teams winning the toss had a 53.5% win percentage with a record of 53-46-1. Notably, adjustments were made in 2022 for postseason games, allowing both teams the chance to score in overtime. However, those rules have not been applied to the regular season yet. Many within the league are expressing concern that the current rules give too significant of an advantage to the team that wins the overtime coin toss.
