Why ties shouldn’t exist in the NFL

By Hunter Walker, Sports Editor

Sept. 30, 2025

SANFORD, Maine – People have been debating for years whether the NFL should have tie games or not, but it’s never been a super big issue when the majority of the tie games were low scoring games between bad teams. On Sunday night the Cowboys and Packers dueled in a game labeled as the “Micah Parsons revenge game” following the trade involving him, but it ended in a 40-40 tie leaving more questions than answers as to who won the trade.

In the last 25 years there have been 15 tie games, 5 of them have happened in the past 5 years, only 3 of those tie games both teams eclipsed 30 points, with Cowboys vs Packers being the only game where each team scored 40. 

This is the 2nd highest scoring tie game of all time, the highest scoring one happened in 1964 with a 43-43 tie between the Patriots and the Raiders, a game so long ago that the Patriots were the “Boston Patriots” rather than the New England Patriots. Just that fact alone shows how rare it is that a game ends in a tie after teams score 40 or more points.

Fans feel as if they were robbed of a possible game of the year just because of the tie, and the players don’t like it either, “You don’t play this game for ties,” stated Cowboys QB Dak Prescott.

Many fans ask the question, “why doesn’t the NFL adopt college football overtime rules?” Those rules could bring a huge change to the game, making overtime more exciting and the outcome of the game wouldn’t feel meaningless.

For those who don’t know how college overtime rules work, both teams are guaranteed a possession but instead they start just 25 yards away from the end zone, if both teams are still tied after the first overtime period then it goes into a second overtime, from this point on every touchdown requires a 2-point conversion afterwards, if it then goes to a third overtime both teams start trying to get a 2-point conversion from the 3 yard line, until eventually the period ends with a team leading or a team fails to score and the other doesn’t.

On October 23, 2021, Illinois beat Penn State in a low scoring game but it took 9 overtime periods to get it done. If there was a possibility of a game this long in the NFL fans would be thrilled. College overtime rules also brought an amazing game between Texas A&M and LSU in 2018, the score was 31-31 going into overtime, after seven overtime periods it ended 74-72. Now imagine what the final score could have been between the Cowboys and Packers if they had these rules, they were striking back and forth all game so it’s not crazy to assume they could’ve gone for nearly 60 points or more.

The NFL has its reasons to not adapt these rules, such as a game taking place at 1 pm could continue to long and interfere with the broadcast of a 4 pm game. There could also be inflated stats from this and cause players who go into overtime to start breaking records that were set without overtime, but that’s the sacrifice that needs to be made to stop ties from happening.

Fans are upset, players are upset, and all the tie is going to do is complicate the playoff seeding at the end of the season if both teams make playoffs, rules need to change by next season.