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NFL coaches back idea of shortening overtime to 10 minutes

Courtesy of Chris Humphreys, USA Today Sports

No one in the NFL likes ties. The old saying that it’s like kissing your cousin rings true. In fact, there were players in the game’s past that had no idea a game could end in a tie. Yes, we’re looking at Donovan McNabb here.

In any event, the league has thrown a couple different ideas at the wall to change overtime around the NFL recently. Some conclude that a college-style overtime period would work best. Others don’t think ties have any part in the game.

At the annual league meeting earlier this year, a proposal was sent to the competition committee that would have shortened overtime to 10 minutes, from its normal length of 15 minutes.

While that idea ended up being tabled, there’s hope that the league will take this matter up again during its spring meeting next month.

And if you ask multiple NFL head coaches, the idea of shortening overtime seems to make a ton of sense.

“It may change certain strategies. You’ll see more risk taking to gain possessions,” Texans head coach Bill O’Brien said, via NFL.com. “I don’t want to see a bunch of ties, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

This is a solid point to make. If teams knew that their possessions were more limited in the final stanza, they would likely take more chances. Though, as one could imagine, the idea that shorterning the overtime period could create more ties isn’t appealing to anyone around the game.

For his part, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh seems to fall in line with what his AFC counterpart believes.

“Ten minutes seems long enough,” Harbaugh said. “Usually by 10 minutes, you’re just trying to survive the last five.”

There’s also less risk of injuries. As players become more exhausted throughout the game, injuries themselves become more prevelant. It’s like that in any sport, but really is magnified in the contact sport that football is.

This could represent a happy medium between staying with the current rules and changing to college overtime rules. After all, we would then see stats padded to an absurd level should the NFL institute the college football overtime idea.

In any event, look for this to be a topic of discussion at the league meeting next month.

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