Nobody likes logging additional hours at work. When the whistle blows, you want to slide down the tail of your dinosaur and leave the rock quarry.
But unearthing Cold, Hard Football Facts demands extra effort. To find the grand nuggets of truth, you must tirelessly dig through the petty rubble of opinion. That's why, long after the passionless "pundits" have punched out, we're still keeping our noses to the gridiron grindstone.
Like the typical workingman, NFL players are sometimes required to put in overtime as well. The concept has been part of the league's regular-season bedrock since 1974, when a "sudden death" period lasting 15 minutes was adopted to help determine a winner of all games. Ties, after all, are about as useful as foot-powered cars or bird-beak can openers.
Thanksgiving Weekend 2005 made fervent fans thankful for this bonus football. It was just the fourth time in league history that as many as four games on the slate went to an extra frame. The NFL record for most overtime games in a single weekend is five – set in Week 6 (Oct. 8-9) of the 1995 season – and there have been two other instances of four OTs – 1993's Week 18 (Jan. 2-3, 1994) and 2002's Week 7 (Oct. 20).
This season's big overtime procession began with a Broncos victory on Thursday and continued throughout Sunday, as the Chargers, Rams and Seahawks all prevailed. Among the defeated were the NFC East's Cowboys, Redskins and Giants, marking the first time that three teams from one division had ever lost in sudden death on the same weekend.
Also on the losing end in Week 12 were the Texans, who are scraping the bottom of the gridiron gravel pit with a 1-10 record. The four-year-old franchise remains winless in OT, having dropped all three opportunities. (A team-by-team list of overtime records appears here.) Like the Redskins, the Texans surrendered a touchdown in sudden death (when allowing only a field goal would have enabled them to cover the spread). It was just the eighth time that two overtime games were decided by six points on the same day.
Since being instituted 22 seasons ago, overtime has been played in 391 NFL games. Here is a yearly breakdown of the numbers and percentages for how they were settled:
*stats updated following the end of the 2005 season
|
Season |
OT Games |
Won By FG |
Won By TD |
Won By Safety |
Ended In Tie |
|
1974 |
2 |
0 |
1 (.500) |
0 |
1 (.500) |
|
1975 |
9 |
7 (.778) |
2 (.222) |
0 |
0 |
|
1976 |
5 |
3 (.600) |
1 (.200) |
0 |
1 (.200) |
|
1977 |
6 |
4 (.667) |
2 (.333) |
0 |
0 |
|
1978 |
11 |
6 (.545) |
4 (.364) |
0 |
1 (.091) |
|
1979 |
12 |
8 (.667) |
4 (.333) |
0 |
0 |
|
1980 |
13 |
8 (.615) |
4 (.308) |
0 |
1 (.077) |
|
1981 |
10 |
8 (.800) |
1 (.100) |
0 |
1 (.100) |
|
1982 |
4 |
2 (.500) |
1 (.250) |
0 |
1 (.250) |
|
1983 |
19 |
14 (.737) |
4 (.211) |
0 |
1 (.053) |
|
1984 |
9 |
6 (.667) |
2 (.222) |
0 |
1 (.111) |
|
1985 |
10 |
6 (.600) |
4 (.400) |
0 |
0 |
|
1986 |
16 |
6 (.375) |
8 (.500) |
0 |
2 (.125) |
|
1987 |
13 |
8 (.615) |
4 (.308) |
0 |
1 (.077) |
|
1988 |
9 |
7 (.778) |
1 (.111) |
0 |
1 (.111) |
|
1989 |
11 |
6 (.545) |
3 (.273) |
1 (.091) |
1 (.091) |
|
1990 |
10 |
9 (.900) |
1 (.100) |
0 |
0 |
|
1991 |
15 |
11 (.733) |
4 (.267) |
0 |
0 |
|
1992 |
10 |
10 (1.000) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
1993 |
7 |
6 (.857) |
1 (.143) |
0 |
0 |
|
1994 |
16 |
14 (.875) |
2 (.125) |
0 |
0 |
|
1995 |
21 |
13 (.619) |
8 (.381) |
0 |
0 |
|
1996 |
14 |
13 (.929) |
1 (.071) |
0 |
0 |
|
1997 |
17 |
11 (.647) |
4 (.235) |
0 |
2 (.118) |
|
1998 |
7 |
4 (.571) |
3 (.429) |
0 |
0 |
|
1999 |
11 |
5 (.455) |
6 (.545) |
0 |
0 |
|
2000 |
13 |
10 (.769) |
3 (.231) |
0 |
0 |
|
2001 |
17 |
14 (.824) |
3 (.176) |
0 |
0 |
|
2002 |
25 |
17 (.680) |
7 (.280) |
0 |
1 (.040) |
|
2003 |
23 |
19 (.826) |
4 (.174) |
0 |
0 |
|
2004 |
12 |
8 (.667) |
3 (.250) |
1 (.083) |
0 |
|
2005 |
14 |
|
5 (.357) |
0 |
0 |
|
TOTALS |
391 |
272 (.696) |
101 (.258) |
2 (.005) |
16 (.041) |
Given the conservative nature of most coaches, it's not surprising that 70 percent of overtime games in the NFL have been decided by field goals. Touchdowns, especially those not coming from defense or special teams, occur with much less frequency, and it took until Sunday for the total to top 100.
Only once in each decade has there been a year when field goals didn't outnumber touchdowns in overtime: 1974 (0 FGs; 1 TD), 1986 (6 FGs; 8 TDs) and 1999 (5 FGs; 6 TDs). Although such a season hasn't happened yet in the 2000s, there has been a balance through the first 12 weeks of the current year.
Digging deeper, we see that the ratio for the first half of this decade was even more skewed than it had been in the past. Field goals decided overtime games 76 percent of the time between 2000 and 2004, while touchdowns constituted just 22 percent.
The Cold, Hard Football Facts reveal that this has already been a record-setting decade for overtime. In 2002, 25 games went to sudden death, the largest total in NFL history. The following year featured the second-most, 23. The 2003 season also established a new mark for consecutive weeks of at least one OT game, with 11.
The total number of overtimes dropped like a stone (to 12) in 2004, but Week 10 saw an extremely rare trifecta that may never be duplicated. Three games went to overtime with the identical score (17-17), and all three were decided in different ways. A 42-yard field goal by Matt Stover propelled the Ravens past the Jets, 20-17. The Jaguars defeated the Lions, 23-17, on David Garrard's 36-yard touchdown pass to Jimmy Smith. And Tennessee's Fred Miller, who had recovered a Billy Volek fumble in the end zone, was tackled for a safety by Chicago's Adewale Ogunleye, giving the Bears a 19-17 victory over the Titans.
Any time that multiple games in a particular weekend have an extra session, there is the potential for something special ... maybe even a page right out of history. For NFL fans, overtime rocks.
