In the end, the somewhat sudden and quite deathly end, the most valuable player in the NFLhad as much to say about whether his team would reach the Super Bowl as the person occupying seat 3 of row 10 in section 302 at Arrowhead Stadium.
Actually, that person probably had more to say than Patrick Mahomes, because it is not customary for a quarterback to stand on the sideline and scream his lungs out to disrupt the opposition while his team
DeShon Elliott Jerseys s defense is on the field.
Mahomes only could watch. That is the absurdity of the NFLs overtime rule, that Kansas Citys best player could have no impact on breaking a tie between the Chiefs and the Patriots because of the vagaries of a coin flip.
New England correctly called the coin to s, correctly chose to receive the kickoff remember, this , even with the pluperfect Patriots and then converted three third-and-longs in a 75-yard drive that ended with Rex Burkheads plunge into the end zone for and a trip to Atlanta to play
Daryl Worley Jerseys the Rams in Super Bowl 53. The players who had been the e sence of the Chiefs succe s throughout their 12-4 regular season were spectators through all of this.
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The NFL's overtime rule calls for a sudden-death victory if the team that po se ses the ball first scores a touchdown on that drive. Its preposterous. In fact, because the Chiefs were the home team a designation earned by achieving the best regular-season record of any team in the conference they didn't even get to call the coin to s. The visiting squad gets that honor, just because.
So the Patriots were empowered because they were worse.
No other sport decides its championship in this manner. In fact, no one else in football does this.
One can quarrel with the college football overtime rules, which guarantee each team po se sion at the 25-yard line until one team scores more points in a round. This rule may be contrived, but it is just.
Imagine if baseball were to decide a League Championship Series game that progre sed to extra innings by awarding a spot in the World Series to a team that scored a run in the top half of the 10thwithout allowing the team in the field a turn at bat.
Detroit Lions Accessories Thats what the NFL just did.
The only other sport that decides such a consequential contest by sudden death is the NHL, but even if a team were to win po se sion at the start of OT and dash immediately to the goal without the opposition ever so much as touching the puck its happened once, maybe twice, in a century of playoff hockey the winning team needed to prevail in a challenge of skill to gain po se sion. A face-off is decided by execution,
Joel Heath Jerseys not chance.
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The response from those who prefer not to consider the logic of how their games function is simple: KCshould have stopped the opponent from scoring a touchdown. There is no weight to this argument, because there is no reason to believe if the Patriots defense had been forced onto the field first a defense that allowed 24 points in the fourth quarter it would have stopped the Chiefs from scoring a TD.
Thus, the coin flip had as much to say about which team reached the Super Bowl as anything else that transpired Sunday in Kansas City.
The NFL addre sed the imperfection in its overtime rules in 2012, when it removed the po sibility the coin-flip winner could drive to a decisive field goal and end the game there. Now, if the team that wins the coin flip earns three points, the opposition gets an opportunity to match or beat it.
That was a half-measure. It was an improvement. But if onemade Robert De Niro the lead of Chicago Fire,itd still be a crummy TV show. It'd
Ifeatu Melifonwu Jerseys just be a crummy TV show with a better star.
"With all the progre sive NFL rule changes that have benefited offense, its time for the overtime rules to be updated as well,"tweeted former NFL quarterback Jim Everett. "Starting in 2019, gives both teams an equal opportunity to score. College rules work!"
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The rule that allows Tom Brady the opportunity to win the seasons biggest game because his side called heads and denies the same to Mahomes is not the worst rule in sports. (By now, you surely know the worst rule in sports is in the NBA; itallows a team that calls timeout late in games to advance the ball 55 feet and make it easier to achieve a game-winning basket). But NFL overtime is a terrible way to decide who goes to the Super Bowl.
The solution at this stage of the season has got to be to put 15 minutes on the clock and see which team has more points when that period is done. And if its still tied, to do it again. Maybe another 15 minutes, maybe
Barry Sanders Jerseys just 10; that could be discu sed. But theres no defense for keeping an offense like the one the 2018 Chiefs deployed from having a say in theteams destiny.
In the end, the somewhat sudden and quite deathly end, the most valuable player in the NFLhad as much to say about whether his team would reach the Super Bowl as the person occupying seat 3 of row 10 in section 302 at Arrowhead Stadium.
