Novel NFL overtime proposal: Wind the clock up, then wind it down | Inside Coverage

| 2016 World University American Football Championships - Monterrey | 03/25/2025

(This article was written with the assistance of Castmagic, an AI tool, and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy. Please reach out to us if you notice any mistakes.)

With the NFL considering yet another change to its overtime — this time, guaranteeing that each team touches the ball no matter what — Jason Fitz came up with a novel overtime proposal during a discussion with senior NFL writer Charles Robinson on the Inside Coverage Podcast.

Consider this scenario: It’s the AFC championship game, a high-stakes matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills. As the fourth quarter ends in a tie, they move into overtime.

The coin toss is a tense moment, but the Chiefs win it. Patrick Mahomes then engineers a 12-play drive, chewing up 7:06 of clock before tossing a touchdown pass to Travis Kelce.

Here’s the proposal: Because the Chiefs took 7:06 off the clock to score, that’s the amount of time the Bills get to counter.

“They got to go down and match that score in that amount of time,” Fitz explained. “Look at this, I think we just solved overtime.”

Robinson isn’t quite convinced.

“It’s an interesting approach to it,” Robinson says. “But what if you scored eight seconds? …. The team’s getting the ball back and they’re going, ‘Great, so now we have an opportunity to match this in eight seconds.'”

“Then you just got to look at your defense and be like, ‘Really, you did this to us?'” Fitz said.

Robinson explained why he doesn’t think owners will adopt a proposal like Fitz’s.

“This is why I think these proposals often don’t even get to the voting phases, because this breaks out in these rooms and there starts to be these debates and arguments, and then somebody raises their hand and goes, ‘Is this really broken?'” he explained. “Does the data show? Or are some people just upset about a certain scenario that played out, you know, with their particular team?

“I don’t think it’s gonna work. Fitz. I don’t think we solved it today on Inside Coverage. We didn’t fix overtime. Sorry.”

What say you? Do you like Fitz’s overtime proposal (obviously with the need to flesh it out a bit more)?

Roger Kelly is an editor and a writer for AFI. A former PR Director the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League for 7 years, he now lives in Sweden writing about and scouting American Football throughout the world.