- The Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers played to a 40-40 tie, the NFL’s first since 2022.
- Players from both teams expressed dissatisfaction with the tie, preferring a definitive winner and loser.
- Cowboys owner Jerry Jones stated he is fine with the current overtime rules and does not expect them to change.
ARLINGTON, TX – Bring back sudden death overtime?
If you’d have opened a debate of players involved in the Sunday night 40-40 marathon between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers, it seems that there might have been no way the NFL would have had its first tie since 2022.
Like almost always, there would have been a winner. And a loser.
“You don’t play the game for ties,” Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott declared.
Until Sunday night, it had never happened for Prescott, in his 10th NFL season – and the rarity hadn’t occurred for any Cowboys team since 1969. Green Bay last tied in 2018.
“It’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around it,” Prescott added. “I know I’d feel a lot worse if it was a loss. It’s a weird feeling.”
Prescott was hardly alone with that sentiment.
“It sucks,” Packers quarterback Jordan Love said. “It doesn’t feel good. It feels pretty weird. This is my first time going through a tie. It feels weird to play a football game, then end in a tie.”
The Packers and Cowboys went at it for nearly four hours – 3 hours, 47 minutes to be exact – and still couldn’t produce a winner. In one regard, the result should have felt like a win for the Cowboys, who were heavy underdogs on their own turf.
In another sense, it had to feel like a loss, seeing that they were one second away from claiming victory. After Love’s third down pass to the end zone caromed off the back of a defender, Green Bay was left with one second left on the overtime clock, which allowed for Brandon McManus’ 34-yard, walk-off-tie field goal.
Play on?
“Yeah, just for me, personally,” Cowboys receiver George Pickens responded when asked if he would want a rule that would eliminate ties. “I know for the NFL, the organization, it’s a good look. But for me, I want to win.”
Of course, in the playoffs, they keep playing as one team needs to advance. Yet in tweaking the overtime rule for the regular season in 2017, the NFL was inspired by player safety in shortening the overtime period from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.
Another modification came in 2022, when both teams were guaranteed at least one possession for postseason games while regular-season games could be decided if a team scored a touchdown on its first possession. Earlier this year, the regular-season rule was amended to align with the postseason rule.
NFL Week 4 winners and losers: Packers’ tie with Cowboys feels like a loss
Despite the potential for debate, don’t expect a sudden change of heart (or rule) from the NFL that would extend regular-season games.
“No, I think you’ve got to have a time frame,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said on Sunday night. “There’s a time to have the games end; there’s a lot of reasons for that. I’m good, and as long as everybody understands that they can end in a tie, I’m good with it.”
In other words, don’t expect any momentum for the NFL to adopt any college-like overtime rule. Besides, the 40-40 outcome marked only the eighth tie game in the NFL since 2017. Jones contends that Sunday night’s result did nothing to lessen appeal.
Said Jones: “That game was a great game for the NFL, as far as a showcase for the game, the competition.”
And that’s win, lose or draw.
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