The outcome of the game was preordained by the coin toss: in all cases, if you watched the game, you knew what was going to happen: the team that won the toss was going to win.
Forget "fair" in sports. Sports don't have to be fair; the ruleset is understood before the game, and you should design your gameplan accordingly. You could require that the road team play with 10 players, and provided that both teams knew the rules in advance, it is still "fair." The issue isn't fairness, but predictability. To end such a magnificent game with such a predictable outcome is an utter letdown.
Sure, you can show me the overall overtime stats are not that skewed in favor of the team that wins the toss across a large sample of games. I don't buy it. The playoffs are different. Two high-quality offenses, after a four-quarter back-and-forth, emotionally draining war of playoff football? There's just no way a defense is going to hold up against an offense that merely executes competently.
My first idea to solve this problem is what I called "the 3rd quarter of the second half." The rule is simple: in a game where the score is tied at the end of regulation, play a 5th quarter, but don't start it with a coin toss. Just flip sides, and have the team that currently has the ball continue matriculating the ball down the field.
This would result in significant changes in strategy for teams in the 4th quarter. Let me give an example: the Bills/Buccaneers game from earlier this season.
In that game, the Bucs were up 27-10, and Buffalo mounted a furious comeback to tie it, culminating in a 25 yard field goal on 4th and 2 from the 7 with 25 seconds remaining in regulation. Buffalo kicked off, Tampa took a knee, and the game went into overtime. Buffalo actually won the toss and went three and out, and then Tom Brady did what Tom Brady does, and won the game.
But in a world with this type of overtime, the decision calculus would change for the Bills on 4th and 2 from the 7 with 25 seconds remaining. Instead of getting a near-guarantee of an overtime coin toss, the Bills would have been facing a Tom Brady led offense getting the ball back with 15 seconds to go... for another drive. Regulation would expire, we'd go to a commercial, and Brady would have the ball on the next drive.
If the Bills wanted to avoid that outcome, they'd go for the touchdown instead of the field goal. In essence, the interests of the teams involved would mean that the trailing team would change its late game strategy to avoid tying the game at the buzzer. (Tying the game at the buzzer would mean that the other team was getting the ball next.)
I think this is a vastly superior system to the present. It takes the coin flip out of the equation entirely and allows the overtime "one possession" problem to be a product of what happened during the game, rather than in a referee's hand.
Admittedly, this would be a significant change to the endgame in football. I think it would be only for the best. Playing for field goals late is boring; touchdowns are fun.
But if you refused to tinker with the regulation endgame, I have a solution that is actually more responsive to my initial objections about an anticlimax: the "one play to rule them all" option.
What is that? Well, it's a coin flip. Winner of the flip gets to choose: offense, or defense? But instead of getting a kickoff, they get one play: 4th and 2, from the 2 yard line. If they score, they win. If not, they lose.
Two-point conversions are roughly 50 percent plays (48 percent I think). Moreover, the fatigue issue would be somewhat mitigated: while getting it together for one final drive on defense is an enormous task, stopping just one play should be within the physical capabilities of an exhausted defense. Figure out your best play, call it, and see what happens.
Is this "fair?" No, it's not. But it's exciting, it gives both teams a chance, and it's certainly climactic.
So I waver on these options. But I think they're both vastly superior to the current hash of a system we have.
