Your opinions...
Should they change the NFL rules to get rid of tie games in the regular season?
If so, how?
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My opinion... They made a pretty significant change to ensure that both teams get an offensive opportunity in the overtime period. This means that in overtime, it might be quite common that both teams have a sustained offensive drive. However, the overtime period is only 10 minutes long.
I'm not opposed to ties, but I think the way the game ended last night suggests the overtime period is now too short. It was selected when we were still in "Sudden Death" overtime.
I think they should keep the current change (where both teams get a possession), but make the overtime period 15 minutes long. In last night's game, Dallas' overtime possession ended in a field goal because they were stopped with goal to go. The drive took over 5 minutes. Green Bay got the ball to respond, needing a FG to tie or TD to win. While they did end up kicking their game-tying FG on a 4th down play (i.e. the drive was stopped already) as time expired, their playcalling and strategy was SIGNIFICANTLY limited by the clock.
It will be exceedingly rare for a team to have a clock constraint if they're second to get the ball in OT, with a 15 minute period. Allowing 15 minutes would give each team time for a full sustained scoring drive without clock affecting strategy. If the game is still tied at the end of that longer period? Fine, let it be a tie. If the clock period means that after the second offensive drive teams are fighting clock? Fine. But I think 10 minutes means one team might not be affected by clock while the other will, which is a natural imbalance.
