Peter King doesn't get it

Peter King opens his mailbag for his Tuesday edition of MMQB here.

On the second page of the story, here, King responds to the question: "Do you think the NFL should adopt the same overtime rules as they have in college? Alternating possessions and then, after the third OT, they have to go for two. Can you imagine if the Jets and Pats would have traded scores a couple of times Thursday night and the excitement it could generate?''

How's the weather out in Iowa today, Brandon? Bet it's chilly.

Glad we've got this out of the way.

I've never been in favor of the college overtime rule for pro football, but I have been a constant advocate of the rule that each team should have one possession, minimum, in overtime.

I think I see where you're going. This seems fine. Let's see how you make your point.

It's ridiculous that a coin flip should have so much bearing on the outcome of a pro football game,

It is a fact that last Thursday night, when the Jets called tails, and the coin came up tails, the game was automatically declared over and the Jets were winners. Wait, you're saying the Jets still had to play the game and score?

and I don't want to hear that the team that won the toss and received the ball to start overtime has won only 54 percent of the overtime games on that first possession in the history of the system.

This statistic is bull shit.

First, if the team that won the toss scored on their first possession 54 percent of the time, there'd be way more uproar.

John Clayton, in 2002, wrote this piece in which he wrote "Since [1974], there have been 330 overtime games. Only 93 games were won by teams who won the coin toss and then scored on their first possession. That's only 28 percent."

Assuming that the percentage of NFL games that go into overtime hasn't changed drastically in the last six years, there'd have been roughly 66 overtime games between the time Clayton wrote his article and today. If every single one of those 66 games were won by teams who won the coin toss and scored on their first possession, that would make 159 out of 396, or, 40%.

Also, I don't know if I trust this completely, but RealClearPolitics (covering sports for some reason) reported that at the end of 2006, the percentage of overtime games that were won on the first possession was 29%.

I wouldn't care if it were 50 percent, or 42 percent. Every game takes on an individual quality, and the fact that you HAND the ball to a team to start a period without the other team being assured it will have an equal chance to score has always been patently unfair.

Each team has an equal chance of winning the coin toss. The team that loses the coin toss apparently gets a chance to win the game 71% of the time, after stopping their opponents on the first possession of overtime.

The proposal I favor has been shot down by the Competition Committee on several occasions.

Certainly not because it's a stupid proposal. They're just anti-Peter King.

The winner of the overtime coin flip would get a possession, and the other team would get a possession, and if one team does not have more points than the other at the end of the two possessions, then the team that scores next wins.

Peter King just suggested, in writing, that the current system is awful because the team that wins the coin toss gets the first shot at breaking the tie and winning the game. Now, he suggests that if both teams ended the first possession of overtime tied, the team that won the coin toss get the first shot at breaking the tie and winning the game.

Each team had 60 minutes to prove they were better than the other. It didn't happen. Another possession for each doesn't make damn bit of difference.

I've heard lots of arguments against it, but most notably that a defense can win a game in overtime by stopping the coin-flip winner on the first possession ...

What? The best argument against your system is that a defense can win the game for a team by stopping the team on their first overtime possession? Did I miss the sentence where you wrote that, under your suggested overtime rules, the loser of the overtime coin toss wins automatically if their defense forces a punt or turnover? Or, am I right in assuming that the team's offense would still have to score?

and that it would needlessly add time to games already destined to be three-and-a-half hours long. Fairness overrides each one of those arguments.

For national writers, the Patriots losing an overtime game without getting the ball once overrides each of these arguments.