One of the most predictable things about the Competition Committee and the rule proposal process is that every year there are going to be multiple teams proposing changes to rules that hurt them in the previous season. The Baltimore Ravens in particular tend to be ‘guilty’ of doing this pretty frequently, but almost every team does it every so often.
This year, one of those teams will reportedly be the Kansas City Chiefs, who lost to the New England Patriots in overtime during the AFC Championship Game. The Patriots marshalled a late comeback in the game and then received the ball to open the overtime period, scoring a touchdown on the first drive.
That meant that second-year quarterback Patrick Mahomes—the year’s breakout star and league MVP—never got a chance to touch the football in overtime in a year in which he threw for over 5000 yards and threw 50 touchdown passes.
Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach recently appeared on Pro Football Talk Live, and he confirmed on the air that the team would be pursuing such a rule proposal to allow for both teams to have at least one offensive possession in an overtime period.
“Coach is working on that,” Veach said. “I think everybody wants a chance for guys to do what they do. I don’t really see the downside of having that. Especially when you have a player like Pat Mahomes. It would have been a lot of fun. I think people, if they weren’t already tuned in for a great game, would have turned on that overtime”.
Fundamentally, what he says is right, and the NFL is ultimately a business that is in it for the profits. In that particular instance, it would have been advantageous for the league’s revenue purposes had Mahomes and the dynamic Chiefs offense been given an opportunity to try to match Tom Brady’s game-winning drive.
Anybody who has been reading me for a while knows that I’m fully on-board with this idea, so there’s no purpose in trying to walk a fine line here. I would very much like to see a rule adopted that would guarantee both teams an offensive possession regardless of the outcome of the first drive.
I would also like to see the league undo the recent rule change that shortens the overtime period from 15 minutes to 10 minutes during the regular season. The thought process was that in most instances games didn’t even reach that point anyway. Then multiple games did this past season, resulting in ties. Nobody likes ties. Not even the Cleveland Browns were thrilled with their tie in the opener, and they hadn’t won a game in literally over a year.
