NFL Competition Committee to propose shorter overtime

The NFL is exploring changing the duration of overtime games in the regular season.

Next week, the NFL League Meetings will occur in Phoenix, Arizona. During these meetings, owners of NFL teams, team officials, and league representatives will all come together to discuss ways to improve the NFL.

One potential rule change is altering the length of overtime for regular season and preseason games. The NFL’s Competition Committee will examine whether the NFL should reduce the length of overtime from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.

It is worth noting that the NFL is not looking into changing the length of overtime in postseason games.

According to Judy Battista, the NFL is looking to make overtime shorter because it feels that teams who play in a regular season overtime game and then play in a Thursday night game, three to four days later, are at a disadvantage.

Additionally, shortening the overtime period would have the potential impact of slightly shortening what is already a long game to watch. Per Five Thirty-Eight, since 2008 the average length of an NFL games has increased by six minutes.

This hasn’t been the first time this year that the NFL has mentioned wanting to reduce the length of its games. During Super Bowl Week, Roger Goodell commented that the league was trying to make the “product as exciting, and our games as exciting and action-packed,” and that the “[league] thought less was more in this area.”

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Overall, if the NFL does believe that shortening overtime would make the games exciting and help teams that play on Thursday night, I’m all for the change. However, if more teams start having ties because of the change, the rule will need to be repealed.