How could these two teams provide such drama? It surely had nothing to do with the players on the field. With the exception of the most underrated player in football, Jamaal Charles (Chiefs running back, 238 total yards, 0 touchdowns), this game featured a bunch of names mostly anonymous among NFL fans, a Harvard grad playing quarterback for the Bills among those names, and a whole lot of wind.
This game was fascinating because it almost didn't render a result - or as I like to call it, the reason why games are played in the first place. Three punts and two missed field goals later, Kansas City kicker Ryan Succop hit a game winning 35 yard field goal with two seconds remaining in overtime.
We were this close to seeing the first tie game of this decade, and what would have been only the fifth tie in the last twenty years. Thankfully, we didn't.
In March, NFL owners voted almost unanimously to change the playoff overtime format. Instead of the "sudden death" format that the regular season currently operates under, this year's playoff edition will get an extra jolt of fairness. Under the new rules, if the first team to score kicks a field goal, the opposing team has a chance to counter. However, if the team that strikes first scores a touchdown, the game is over.
This seems reasonable, other than the fact that it only applies to the playoffs. I get it. The playoffs can't end in a tie. But as far as I'm concerned, regular season games can't either.
Ties are good for sports like soccer and hockey. Standings and playoff positioning are determined by a point system that rewards more points for better results. There's no such point system in the NFL. Winning percentage is too black and white for teams that have played the same amount of games. Wins and losses should be the only determining factor.
Consider what happened back in 2008, when the Eagles and Bengals played to a 13-13 tie in Week 10. The tie had no bearing on the Bengals who went on to a 4-11-1 record, but proved to be a tremendously important result for the 9-6-1 Eagles.
The Giants, Panthers, Vikings, and Cardinals won their divisions, and the 10-6 Falcons earned the fifth playoff spot. The Eagles earned the sixth spot because they had a higher winning percentage than the Bears, Cowboys, and Bucs, who all finished 9-7.
If the Eagles had beaten the Bengals then they would have won ten games and deserved to be in the playoffs. Had they lost, they would have been 9-7 and mixed up in a four-way tie for the last playoff spot.
To break the tie between the four teams, the team with the best record within the division would have advanced. That would have been the 4-2 Bears. In fact, the Eagles had the worst division record of the four teams, at 2-4. They also lost to the Bears and split with the Cowboys in the regular season. They didn't play the Bucs.
Simply put - the Eagles did not deserve to be in the playoffs that year. They didn't outplay the three 9-7 teams that rendered a result in all sixteen games. In this case, the lack of a sufficient overtime system shook up the playoff picture dramatically.
The failure of the overtime rules was glossed over because the Eagles were successful in the playoffs. They won their first two games before dropping to the Cardinals in the NFC Championship game. Most people assumed they deserved to be in the playoffs because they played well. The regular season is supposed to matter too, but in this case it didn't.
Since the NFL instituted the "sudden death" overtime period in 1974, there have been 17 ties. Thirteen of those occurred before 1990.
This isn't a pressing issue because it doesn't come up too often. Neither do tsunamis - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a plan in place.
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