With the United States out of the World Cup, I have no one left to root for, but I will still be watching every single remaining game, and I’ll be rooting for one thing during those games: that they all go to penalty kicks.
Most soccer fans refer to their sport as the “beautiful game,” but penalty kicks are not beautiful. They are unhinged madness, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off them. It’s got the same drama as watching someone trying to diffuse a bomb while you’re in the room.
Through the first two elimination rounds of the World Cup, there have only been three matches that have ended on penalty kicks, and all of them were awesome: Egypt over Australia, Morocco over the Netherlands and Paraguay over Germany.
Paraguay’s win was one of the biggest upsets of the World Cup this year, and it’s a victory that fans in the South American country will probably be talking about for the next 60 years.
One reason I love penalty kicks is that I hate ties. In soccer, ties are a necessary evil during the regular season (and during the World Cup group stage), but in the NFL, there’s no reason to have them.
The NFL plays only 17 regular-season games, and if I’m ever commissioner, the first thing I’m going to do is eliminate all ties. An NFL playoff game can’t end in a tie, and I love the format there, but that won’t work in the regular season. In the postseason, both teams are guaranteed at least one possession, and if the teams go scoreless or match each other on that first possession and don’t score after that, there’s a possibility the game could go to double overtime or even triple overtime.
During the regular season, it’s not practical to ask players to play multiple overtimes. Playing football takes a huge physical toll on your body over four quarters, and when you throw in a fifth quarter, it’s even worse. That’s one reason the NFL shortened regular-season overtime from 15 minutes to 10 minutes back in 2017.
The shortened period works for me, but if the game is still tied after clocks hit zero in overtime, that’s when things fall apart. I don’t want a tie. The NFL needs to embrace the drama of penalty kicks by creating a suspenseful way to end any game tied after one overtime.
With that in mind, I have two proposals: One is a proposal that’s already in place at the college level, and the other one would guarantee that the “penalty kick” portion of overtime would only last ONE play.
Proposal 1: The two-point shootout
In college, overtime starts with each team getting one possession from their opponent’s 25-yard line. If the game is still tied after both teams have had the ball once, they go into a second overtime. If the game is still tied after the second overtime, then they move on to a new phase of overtime where both teams get to attempt a two-point conversion.
I do NOT want the NFL to steal the first part of the college rule. I want the NFL to keep the 10-minute overtime, but then add the two-point shootout rule if the game is still tied after the initial 10 minutes. The two-point shootout is the closest thing the NFL has to penalty kicks.
There was only one tie game in the NFL last year, and it happened in Week 4 when the Packers and Cowboys played to a 40-40 draw. If the college rule were in place, both teams would have gotten to attempt one two-point conversion after the initial 10-minute overtime period ended. If one team makes it and the other one doesn’t, then that team wins. If both teams make it or both teams fail, then you move on to Round 2 of the two-point shootout.
The Cowboys-Packers game was on Sunday Night Football, and if overtime had ended with the NFL’s first-ever two-point shootout, it might have broken the internet. Even though it ended in a tie, the game still drew 26.9 million viewers, making it NBC’s fifth-most-watched regular-season game last season.
The only downside to the college rule is that if you end things with a two-point shootout, it could drag on for a while. If both teams continue to score or if both teams keep coming up empty, then you could end up having a two-point shootout that goes on for seven or eight rounds, and that’s after both teams just played a 10-minute overtime. That’s not ideal.
If the NFL wants a rule that would end the extra overtime on ONE play, we’ve got one here.
Proposal 2: The field goal gamble
Penalty kicks might not be the best way to end things in soccer, but it’s certainly the most exciting, and that’s how I feel about this rule proposal.
If two NFL teams are still tied after the initial 10-minute overtime period, then everything would come down to the field goal gamble. That’s right, a kicker would get to decide it.
Let’s break down how this would work: If a game is still tied after the initial 10-minute overtime period, there would be another coin toss. The team that wins the toss gets to choose the distance for a field goal attempt. The team that loses the coin toss would then decide whether to attempt the kick or have the other team attempt it.
If this rule had been in place for Packers-Cowboys, here’s how things would have played out:
- Packers win coin toss and they choose a field goal distance of 61 yards.
- The Cowboys have one of the NFL’s best kickers in Brandon Aubrey, so they decide they want to try the kick
- If Aubrey makes it, the Cowboys win. If Aubrey misses, then the Packers win.
The Packers kicker in this game was Brandon McManus, who is 1 of 10 in his career from 60 yards and longer, so the Cowboys could have turned down their option to try the kick and let McManus try it instead.
Letting one team pick the distance of the kick and the other team decide who will attempt the field goal serves as its own system of checks and balances. The team that get to choose the distance of the kick isn’t going to pick 75 yards, because they know there’s a chance that they might have to attempt the kick, so the distance will have to be within reason.
If might seem crazy to let a kicker decide things like, but that happens multiple times per season when we get a game-winning field goal attempt at the end of regulation.
Players might not love the idea of putting the game on a kicker’s foot, but there’s also a chance that some players would totally embrace this rule, and I know that because Russell Wilson actually proposed something similar back in 2021.
Wilson, who now works here at CBS Sports, might be the only person on earth who hates ties more than me.
“This thing drives me crazy,” Wilson said of when NFL games end in a tie. “We go into overtime and play the 10 minutes, and if no one scores, we all end in a tie and everyone goes home? How terrible is that?”
Wilson’s proposal involved having a team attempt a field goal from a set distance (53 yards), but kickers are so good now that it would almost feel like a chip shot. By letting one team pick the distance of the kick, it adds some strategy to Wilson’s proposal. And with an overtime game potentially being decided on one kick, it would certainly add the kind of suspense that we usually only get by watching penalty kicks.
