As soon as the clock hit zero and the Green Bay Packers drilled their 34-yard field goal, the reality was clear: Not all ties are created equal.
And this tie, between the Dallas Cowboys who traded Micah Parsons a month prior and the Packers team to which they traded him, will not go down in the storybooks as just any tie.
The first 40-40 game in NFL history, and the second-highest-scoring NFL tie of all time, will not just fade into the past as another game on an increasingly long NFL schedule.
Too much emotion and desire for revenge characterized the prime-time game that lasted until 11:59 p.m ET and left neither team jubilant.
Im usually an outlier: I think ties are fine and last nights game probably was indicative of deserving a tie more than a win or loss, one executive, who had been part of an NFL tie before, told Yahoo Sports on Monday. But I think this game was also weird because [its] probably one of the more emotional games of the year, and each team wanted to win to prove they won the trade.
The tie here is unsatisfactory for more than just the day. Its for years.
So while its playoff implication stakes may not prove particularly noteworthy, its worth asking: Could this game to remember spark a new conversation about the 2025 season overtime results?
Could the 2025 overtime rule change lead to more ties? And if so, would the NFL care?
Yahoo Sports polled coaches and executives across the league on their reaction to the tie and the rule changes implications. League opinion was divided on whether ties were net positive, but sources from three teams believed this seasons overtime rule adjustments do indeed position the game to produce more ties than in recent years.
If [the Cowboys] can end it with an opening drive TD, they probably go for it on fourth-and-goal at the 4, one source said.
It will lead to more ties, another agreed, since you can effectively run the clock out now, too.
In 2022, after fans questioned whether a coin flip decided the Buffalo Bills playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the NFL passed a rule that both teams would get to possess the ball in overtime during the postseason.
This spring, the league extended that rule to the regular season: No longer would a touchdown on the first possession of overtime end the game.
That influenced the Packers decision to kick rather than receive when winning the overtime coin flip, just as the Giants had elected to kick two weeks earlier in an overtime loss to the Cowboys.
And that likely influenced the Cowboys decision-making on Sunday night as they opted for a field goal with 4:40 left in the 10-minute overtime period rather than attempting one last chance at a touchdown. Dallas knew that its defense hadnt stopped the Packers, or any of four opponents this year. Better to at least take some points.
So while the tie game resulting from overtime field goals wasnt groundbreaking in the sense that the former rules would have given the Packers a possession after Dallas field goal, it was in how it influenced strategy.
The Philadelphia Eagles accounted for that when they proposed a 15-, rather than 10-minute, overtime period in their spring proposal offering the chance for five extra minutes to decide a game like just happened on Sunday night. League voters pushed back on account of player health and safety as well as the interruption to television schedules (the Packers and Cowboys game lasted three hours and 47 minutes.
But the arguments begin to falter amid broader league context. Even with an increase from 16 to 17 regular-season games, game trends have shifted to produce fewer plays per game and thus fewer plays per season. The 151.3 plays per game during the 2024 NFL season was the lowest number since 1996, per league data. Excluding kickoffs that resulted in a touchback, the 144.7 action plays were the lowest mark since pre-1993.
All together, including the preseason, regular season and playoffs, the total number of game plays (and thus chances for injury, the league would argue) dropped by 3,000 from 2010 to 2024.
Weve dropped over a thousand net plays versus the NFL five years ago, one source said. Now we are gonna worry about 15 to 20 extra total plays in a season by going to 15-minute OT?
Add in networks delight at the ratings bumps overtime nearly guarantees, and concerns about appeasing media rights partners (often a key league decision-making factor) falter further.
The resolution nonetheless was truncated from a 15-minute overtime clock to a 10-minute clock before it passed, contributing to the leagues first tie since the 2022 NFL season.
Some in the league preferred that to manufactured results.
A tie is so valuable at the end of the season vs. a loss, one source said. Im sure no one wants a tie. Not sure what the better answer is.
The college system is too gimmicky.
Despite 153 regular-season games continuing into overtime the decade prior to this season, just nine of them ended in a tie, a Yahoo Sports analysis of Pro Football Reference data found. That 5.9% clip drops even further when considering the entire millennium. From the 2000 through the 2024 seasons, only 3.6% (14) of 392 overtime games ended in a tie.
Its no surprise then that Cowboys and Packers teams accustomed to the win-loss binary werent quite sure how to process the outcome.
This game is an outlier. And it may not have enough import to force a change.
But if ties add up, how might the conversation evolve?
The league will no doubt continue to emphasize the importance of game lengths and pace of play. It may also consider the entertainment quality of tie games, with a 40-40 game leaving decision-makers outside the two teams feeling much better than lower-scoring elongated games: The three prior ties ended at 20-20, 20-20 and 16-16.
So as the playoff implications and rule change discourse unfold, the Packers-Cowboys ties unusual circumstances will both help and hurt any momentum for change. Its memorability, given the TV slot and storyline drama, will heighten the disappointment and confusion. But its explosive-offense entertainment value and the conversation-starting incredulity that ensued may actually convince the league that the right kind of ties arent so bad after all.
Even coaches and executives who hadnt seen NBC announce its 26.9 million average viewership number knew that fans would be entertained. Packers-Cowboys topped Tom Brady and Peyton Mannings 2013 duel for the most-watched overtime game in Sunday Night Football history.
Two America[‘s] Teams. High scoring. Micah. Jerry, a source said. Oh yeah. Thats a win for the league.