The Philadelphia Eagles secure a huge overtime win

While meaningful football won’t be played for five more months, the Philadelphia Eagles just secured a massive win that should ripple across the NFL for years to come.

That’s right, in yet another joint effort with the Indianapolis Colts, the Eagles’ proposition to the NFL, guaranteeing that each team gets one possession in overtime, has amassed the 24 votes needed to pass and will officially become NFL law in 2022 and beyond… at least in the playoffs.

Gone are the days of a coin-toss deciding the outcome of a playoff game – as the Buffalo Bills will attest – and in their place should come a bit more intrigue, if not some excruciatingly long playoff games that would make college football teams blush.

Unfortunately for Donovan McNabb, regular season games can still end in a tie, but in the postseason, when such an outcome would be ludicrous, things just got a whole lot more interesting.

The Philadelphia Eagles helped to secure the NFL a massive win.

When two teams duke it out for 60 minutes only to come to a stalemate draw, it creates the potential for a big-time moment. The excitement gets ratcheted up, casual fans who see the prospects of overtime online tune into games, and, most importantly of all, folks start to place wagers on the outcome to “get a little skin in the game.”

That, my friends, is why a sour grapes rule change often presented by teams on the “wrong side” of a coinflip gained so much traction this year: Money. The NFL has been increasingly looking for ways to expand its outreach and thus draw more eyes – and dollars – to the game. Sports betting is a big part of that, as is the league’s expansions out to Nickelodeon, Amazon Prime, and even Youtube, and, as the ways the league can monetize its on-field product continues to grow, finding ways to make games more exciting and, thus, “must watch” has become just as vital.

If only one playoff game is affected by this rule change in a positive way, it’ll be a worthy change.

Well, there you go, the NFL; the Philadelphia Eagles swooped in – with a little help from the Indianapolis Colts – and saved the day. The excitement of the playoffs just got ratcheted up a level, the games just became a little more “must watch,” and fans won’t complain ad nauseam about how an all-time great shootout ended on the flip of a coin. A win for all parties involved.