Bill Belichick: NFL Games Should Have a Full Overtime Period

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Bill Belichick used to bring up a pretty interesting idea for modifying overtime—and it was to take sudden death, and go the other way entirely by setting a finite time and playing a whole period out. He’d raise the idea when college OT came up. He didn’t like the college overtime because it didn’t closely enough resemble regulation, by marginalizing special teams. Similarly, sudden death would marginalize the element of the clock.

“When it’s first team to score, or however the rules are set, or the way it is in college, that’s not the end of the game,” Belichick told WEEI in 2012. “It’s like basketball, you go and play basketball it comes down to the end of regulation, you’re making three-point shots, you’re fouling to get the ball back. OK, great, so now you’re in overtime. It’s the same thing (with a set clock). You get that same strategic element at the end of the basketball game. In football, we’ve lost that with the rules that we have now.” Asked what he wants, Belichick shot back, “Put some time on the clock and play. ... Play to the end of the game. Put 10 minutes, eight minutes (on the clock), whatever we decide.”

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