Tim Benz: Something to love, something to hate about NFL's overtime rules change

I suppose Steelers coach Mike Tomlin won’t be happy with the NFL rule change altering overtime in the playoffs.

Then again, based on his comments Monday, Tomlin wasn’t all that happy with the rule as it stood last year anyway.

Tomlin wanted to go back to old-fashioned, pre-2010 “sudden death” overtime. In other words, the first score of any kind would win the game.

Instead, the NFL has acquiesced to years of outcry from fans who wanted to guarantee that both teams get at least one chance to possess the ball on offense in overtime.

If the score remains tied — or gets re-tied — in overtime after one possession each, and the first team scores to break the tie on the third possession, so be it. Game over.

The rule change won’t affect the regular season, though. The modification passed Tuesday by NFL owners (29-3) will only impact playoff games.

From the start of 2010 through last year, the rule had been that the team who won the coin toss could end the game if it scored a touchdown on its first possession. The team that lost the coin flip would only get the ball if the opponent kicked a field goal, punted or gave up the ball on downs or via a turnover.

Personally, I was never all that put off by the immediate sudden death we saw until 2010 or the “one-touch, one touchdown” format we’ve witnessed over the last 12 years.

However, if the owners have decided that both teams need to get at least one possession in overtime for the outcome to be considered “fair,” I get it. That doesn’t anger me either.

I just don’t grasp how the prospect of a 2-1 offensive possession count is any more or less fair than a 1-0 count. I mean, they don’t end baseball extra innings after the top of the 11th with the visiting team winning, do they?

But I supposed that debate can wait until people inevitably start complaining about this system, too, and the NFL tries to figure out the best way to modify the college OT format of alternating possessions until the game ends.

I expect that to happen, oh, right about this time next year.

The only thing I strongly dislike about the rule change is that the NFL is differentiating between the regular season and playoffs. The league is structured to highlight the importance of every single game. It’s not 162. It’s not 82. It’s only 17. The NFL has always been able to sell the theory that every regular-season game is its own Super Bowl.

To me, this decision is a conscious blurring of that line.

After all, look at the Steelers’ overtime situation in the final week of last season. If they lose in Baltimore that day, they don’t make the playoffs. Why should that game be treated any differently — minimized, essentially — than a playoff game the next week? I don’t like the concept of diluting “play-in” games with rules that are obviously deemed to be inferior.

Shouldn’t a contest like that “deserve” a mandated overtime touch for both teams, too? Or the previous week’s game against Cleveland? Or the last-play nail-biter against the Ravens in early December?

Differentiating three-on-three overtime in the regular season for the NHL versus five-on-five in the playoffs makes sense to me. The NFL’s new differentiation does not.

One aspect of the change I do like, however, is the sudden injection of various levels of strategy that are going to come about. I assume teams will more frequently elect to kick off after winning the coin flip now, so that their offense knows if it needs a touchdown or field goal to win or tie on the second possession.

Also, decisions about when (or if) a team should go for two points after scoring a touchdown on their initial possessions will be significant.

For instance, if the Steelers receive an overtime kickoff on the first possession and score a touchdown, do they go for two and force the hand of the other team? Or do they kick the extra point and force the opposing team to make that call?

If that opposing team does score to pull back within one, does it go for two in an effort to win or lose the game on the spot? Or does it run the risk of giving the ball back to the Steelers for a third possession after an easy PAT kick is converted?

Weather comes into play more. Game flow comes into play more. Coaching decisions come into play more. That’s fun.

I just think it’d be fun in Week 17 of the regular season as much as Week 1 of the playoffs.

But who cares? Something unforeseen will come up this year, and we’ll just complain this edition of NFL overtime into extinction, too, and revisit the whole debate again in 2023.

Maybe Tomlin will get his way then.