THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

A safety is treated just like a touchdown, game over.  Fox had a former head of officiating on explaining the rules right before the ref went into it.

It’s pretty simple: it’s sudden-death in all cases except one, where the receiving team kicks a field goal on their first drive, in which case the other team gets one possession to score. Anything else (TD, safety, punt, turnover, onside kick recovery, etc.) is sudden-death.

The only result they want to avoid is the Saints-Vikings NFC Championship game from a few years ago, where a team can get a good kick return, move the ball 30 yards, and kick a long field goal to win the game.

Here’s an idea: why not just have a small laminated card with an overtime script for referees to read over the PA system? Have a regular season version and a playoff version. Easy. Hell, script the pre-game coin toss ceremony, too.

The NFL.com site has a pretty detailed description of the OT rules with many examples.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d81d817d7/article/postseason-overtime-rules

One scenario I’d like to see clarified is whether an interception return after an opening-possession FG is a live play.  For example, can such an interception return be fumbled back to the offense?  Would such a return TD count, allowing the possibility for a team to win by 9 points (obviously relevant to gamblers)?

Your team got a FG.  You then intercept a ball.  You’d have to be an idiot to not stay down.

If you choose to run with the ball, the play must still be live.  And if you fumble on that play, then the offense gets a NEW drive.  Which would seem to stop OT dead right there.

So, the only way to lose is if you intercept - fumble - original offense team scores ON THAT play.

I would think that’s how it would have to work.

According to the link in #4, it looks like it’s as soon as the ball is intercepted and possessed:

“Possession: Actual possession of the ball with complete control. The defense gains possession when it catches, intercepts, or recovers a loose ball”

Also interesting to note is that the receiving team on a kickoff is considered to have a “possession” from the kickoff itself.  Which as far as I can tell has two implications:

(1) you cannot get safety-ed on your first possession, then onside kick and recover it and go one to score.

(2) if you kick off in OT, you can onside kick and if you recover you can end the game on a field goal, since the kick itself was the other team’s “possession”.

If you kick a field goal, then the other team fumbles and you recover it in their end zone, you take possession and score at the same instant.  How would that be ruled (not that it matters for who wins, of course)?

I don’t understand why the referee is explaining the OT rules as if the players don’t know what the rules are, yet.  It’s not like the referee starts the game off explaining, “We’re going to have two half games with a 20 minute break between them, split into two quarters each.  At the conclusion of the first quarter of each half, the teams will change sides and continue from where they left off.  Whichever team kicked off to start the first half will receive the ball in the second half. Whichever team scores the most points in both halves combined wins the game.”

The players and coaches should know the rules already, and it should be up to the TV announcers to explain the overtime rules to the fans.  The referee should just do the coin flip ceremony and keep playing.

It’s also for the benefit of the 70,000 fans at the stadium.

I for one applaud the officials being miked up and explaining things.

Geri - A couple years ago, Donovan McNabb, possibly a Hall of Fame quarterback, didn’t know how overtime worked.

Two weeks ago, the Denver Broncos player who scored the touchdown in overtime didn’t realize the game was over until his teammates rushed the field.

The players don’t know. Maybe they should, but they don’t.

Is there any other sport where the referee is miked and talks to the crowd?

Tennis has the chair umpire miced so he can talk to the crowd.

Hockey uses referee mikes much like the NFL does (penalties, reviews).