There is No Default Right Choice for Playoff Overtime
It's wrong to act like there is.
Harry Enten of CNN wrote an analysis on why NFL head coaches are wrong for electing to kick in playoff overtime. He even pointed to Bills head coach Sean McDermott’s decision to kick rather than receive as a reason he was let go earlier today. That’s an oversimplification at best.
Enten’s analysis relies heavily on regular season overtime to conclude that receiving first is the only correct option. But regular season OT and playoff OT are fundamentally different. In the regular season, teams only get 10 minutes to win; otherwise, the game ends in a tie. In the playoffs, one team must win, and the game can extend into additional periods. That distinction matters.
Because of the clock constraint, receiving first is a slightly better option in the regular season — especially if teams are willing and able to milk the clock. But that isn’t always easy to execute.
In the playoffs, the decision is murkier. Walker Harrison (Let’s go Yankees) did excellent work on this topic and found no clear optimal choice in playoff overtime. In his simulations, teams that received first won 50.3% of the time, while teams that kicked won 49.7% of the time — essentially a coin flip.
The decision should come down to game flow and context. In a game controlled by offense, kicking is often the better option. If both teams score touchdowns, the team getting the ball second can go for two and win the game outright. In a defensive battle, receiving is likely the better choice. You’re more likely to see matching punts or matching field goals, and the team that received first has a higher chance of getting a third possession.
That’s the main advantage of receiving first: the potential to get the ball a second time. The downside is that you put your defense in a brutal spot. The team that receives second has an information advantage. If they’re down seven, they know they have all four downs to score a touchdown. And if they do score, they’re not kicking the PAT — they’re going for two to win.
In a way, the best-case scenario after electing to receive, scoring a touchdown, creates a game state that forces the second team to be ultra-aggressive with nothing to lose.
This is why I lean toward kicking in playoff overtime. But it’s not a 100% rule. Context — quality of the offenses and defenses, how the game has played out, weather, injuries — should all factor in. Acting like receiving first is the one and only smart option because you used a flawed sample of games to set a base rate misses the nuance of how playoff overtime actually works.
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