By ROB MAADDI AP Pro Football Writer
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NFL is considering changing overtime rules in the regular season to decrease the advantage for teams that win the coin toss.
“It’s time to rethink the overtime rule,” league executive Troy Vincent said Wednesday at the NFL scouting combine.
Vincent said the competition committee agrees overtime rules need to be addressed. Receiving the ball first has become more of an advantage than before 2011, when overtime was sudden death. Receiving teams won 56.8% of overtime games from 2017-24, up from 55.4% from 2001-11.
Both teams currently get an opportunity to possess the ball in overtime unless a touchdown is scored on the first possession.
The rules are different in the playoffs. Both teams get a chance to have a possession even if the offense scores a touchdown on the opening drive. That postseason change came after Buffalo’s loss to Kansas City in a divisional-round game in January 2022.
Making the overtime rules the same in the regular season is a possible solution, along with extending the period to 15 minutes.
Among other changes, the NFL plans to use its virtual measuring system to determine first downs in 2025. This wouldn’t eliminate the officials who manually spot the ball and use chains to mark the line to gain. The optimal tracking system notifies officiating instantly if a first down was gained after the ball is spotted by hand.
“We used this in the background last season,” said Kimberly Fields, the NFL’s senior vice president of football operations. “The goal for 2025 is to continue to train our techs, who are the ones who will be utilizing the technology, finalizing all of our officiating processes and procedures around virtual measurements and testing the graphics for the broadcast and in-stadium, so fans in the stadium and fans watching on television can see what we’re doing. The chain crew will still be there as backup.”
Also, the competition committee will review expansion of the replay assist to include more fouls, but Vincent said “there was no appetite” from the committee to use video replay to throw a flag.
A team could still propose a rule change to do that. For now, if officials miss an obvious penalty such as a facemask, replay assist can’t throw a flag.
Replay assist was used in 2024 to pick up flags thrown for roughing the passer (contact with head/neck), unnecessary roughness (runner out of bounds), intentional grounding and ineligible player downfield.
Expansion under consideration for 2025 would include roughing the passer (hit below the knee), unnecessary roughness (defenseless receiver/player), facemask (contact of hand with facemask), tripping, illegal crackback block and horse-collar tackle, among others.
Vincent said the league wants to find a way to bring back onside kicks while also installing a permanent kickoff rule after a one-year trial with what’s called the dynamic kickoff.
The trial made kickoffs more exciting with higher rate of returns. Vincent said he anticipates the spot of the touchback on kickoffs being moved from the 30- to the 35-yard line.
But the changes impacted the onside kick. Teams were 3 for 50, the lowest recovery rate since 2001.
“Universal consensus that we know we need to do something with this play,” Vincent said.
He added there wasn’t much conversation around a fourth-and-long option to keep possession, though those discussions could occur next month.
The tush push play mastered by the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles has been a hot topic this week because the Green Bay Packers proposed banning it. Some opponents have argued the play is dangerous, but Vincent said the league found no injuries on the play in 2024.
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