Adam Thielen Has Emphatic Take on Overtime Rules
Leave them alone – that’s the paraphrased message from Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen on proposed changes to overtime rules in the NFL.
After the AFC Divisional playoff game in January, a renewed call for change circulated about overtime rules. The Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills partook in one of the greatest football games ever, ending with a Chiefs victory in overtime after simply winning a coin toss and scoring a touchdown.
Detractors to the current overtime format believe the other team should have the opportunity to match the touchdown. As it stands, the team on defense first in an overtime period must hold the offense to a field goal at the maximum to get possession of the ball back.
In an era of offense, fans want both offenses to get a crack at scoring – even it means the defense collapsed in allowing the other team to score a touchdown.
Adam Thielen disagrees, tweeting his thoughts on Monday morning:
Thielen’s thoughts are noteworthy because he plays offense – and one might think he’d want to change the rule to more accommodate the offense side of operations. But nope. The league last tweaked the overtime rules in 2010, giving the other team a chance to score if a field goal was the result of the opening overtime drive. Before that, the rules were sheer sudden death. Whichever team scored first won the contest.
These cries for change are nothing new. The victim of overtime rules two years ago was the same Chiefs team. In 2021, they were the “beneficiaries.” Two years apart, Kansas City had both experiences. Stuff like this tends to even out.
Yet, that’s not how the Bills feel now. When Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes were trading haymakers, fans wanted them to play into the wee hours of the morning as the offenses were that damn entertaining. College football follows a similar style, piling points on the board until a team simply stops scoring.
That’s the vision for the NFL – at least in the playoffs. While the rule change proposals apply to regular season and overtime contests, a reasonable compromise could probably be found in playoff games-only.
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This opinion basically comes down to how much one values the defensive side of the ball. All a defense has to do in overtime is stop an offense from finding the endzone – or prevent the offense from reaching overtime altogether.
Otherwise, if one truly views the NFL as a conduit for fantasy football fun and offense, then, yes, more offensive possessions make sense.
It is unclear if the rule will actually get changed. After the New England Patriots “used the rule” to beat the Chiefs in the 2019 playoffs, little enthusiasm existed for change. Perhaps this time is different.
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