Column: Don’t tweak the NFL overtime rule, fix it

The NFL’s theater of the absurd is once again working overtime.

At the owners’ meetings in Chicago on Tuesday, the league finally made a change to the dumbest rule in sports.

Except it’s still the dumbest rule in sports.

The owners agreed to shorten the league’s onerous overtime period from 15 to 10 minutes, which is a little like wrapping garland around a dumpster.

The thing still stinks. The NFL overtime is still patently unfair, competitively unbalanced, and wretchedly unreasonable.

It’s beset by a flaw so basic, even a group with zero collective common sense should be able to understand it, yet despite all sorts of tweaks and twists, the NFL owners still haven’t gotten it right.

It’s still the only overtime in any sport that does not guarantee both teams a chance to win.

It’s still the only sport where often the most important overtime play is a coin flip.

You know the rule, but it’s worth repeating because it seems like fans are numb to its shame. If the team that wins the coin flip scores a touchdown on its initial possession, the game is over. The losing team is not allowed to use its offense. The winning team doesn’t have to use its defense.

Think about that. It’s like baseball allowing the first run to decide an extra-inning game without both teams coming to bat. It’s like basketball overtime games being decided on only half the court, with only one team having a chance to shoot.

Several years ago the league changed the rules to allow mutual possessions if the coin-flip winner only kicks a field goal. And, of course, if there is no first-possession score, the other team gets the ball and all is fair.

But still, there remains a loophole that turns overtime into a sham, and that loophole is a touchdown. If you don’t believe that matters, then you weren’t watching the last game of last season.

Completely buried in the cheers for Tom Brady’s greatness was any outrage at Matt Ryan’s inertia. By leading the New England Patriots down the field for the winning touchdown on the first possession of overtime in their 34-28 Super Bowl victory, Brady kept Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons’ offense on the sideline until the fall.

Again, think about it. The game’s most prolific scoring unit never had a chance to score in the biggest moments of the season’s biggest game.

Nobody seemed to notice. Everyone was so enamored with Brady, nobody seemed to care. The Falcons’ inability to hold a 25-point lead in regulation led to a feeling that they deserved their fate, but still, in the end, they deserved a fair chance to right themselves, and didn’t get it.

Just wondering, but if that were Brady stuck on the sideline while the Falcons scored the winning touchdown, you think there might have been a bigger outcry? Seriously, if Brady is the quarterback rendered helpless, the overtime rule is probably changed that night.

It was, in fact, the handcuffing of another great quarterback that led to the rules being tweaked so that only a touchdown could finish a game on a first possession. In the 2009 NFC championship game, Brett Favre, then of the Minnesota Vikings, watched helplessly as the New Orleans Saints kicked an overtime field goal to end the game on the first possession.

The overtime rule was eventually changed but, once again, it wasn’t changed drastically enough. Since that touchdown-only alteration, six playoff games have gone to overtime and all six have been won by the team that correctly called the coin toss.

A couple of years ago, after Peyton Manning was sidelined when his Broncos lost a regular-season overtime game to the quick-scoring Seattle Seahawks, the legendary quarterback put it in perspective.

“They changed the rules a little bit, but it doesn’t really change if you go down and get a touchdown,’’ Manning said at the time. “It puts a premium on the coin toss.”

Imagine that. One of the smartest players in NFL history acknowledging that overtime games involve a “premium on the coin toss.”

Patriots running back James White breaks a tackle attempt by Falcons defensive back Ricardo Allen to score the game-winning touchdown from two yards in overtime in Super Bowl LI.

(Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

And yet when the rule was finally changed again Tuesday, it was to shorten the overtime and cause more tie games because of what owners are claiming is concern over player safety?

Please. According to ESPN, there were 32,732 plays in the NFL last year, and only 60 in the final five minutes of overtime. That’s a small sample size for player safety.

If the NFL truly cared about player safety, owners would eliminate the Thursday night games that don’t give players adequate time to recover from their Sunday bruising. If the NFL truly cared about player safety, well, don’t even get us started on concussions.

This new overtime rule smacks of pandering to TV partners who don’t want longer games dragging down their Sunday afternoon schedules.

You know what kind of overtime TV networks love? College football overtime. Each team gets a shot from the opponent’s 25-yard line, and if they’re still tied, another shot, again and again, until a winner is decided. The method was initially considered hokey, but is now recognized for both its raw excitement and basic fairness, and the NFL would be wise to open its eyes, lose its pride and steal it whole.

When it comes to overtime, the NFL owners need to start using the part of their body specified by the Patriots’ Matthew Slater at midfield in Houston last February, with a word that both dramatically and sadly won a Super Bowl.

“Heads!’’

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

Get more of Bill Plaschke’s work and follow him on Twitter @BillPlaschke

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