Unsurprisingly, Clay Matthews thinks both teams should get the ball in overtime.
The Packers’ linebacker voiced his opinion after Saturday night’s overtime loss at Arizona, a game in which Green Bay gave up a touchdown on the first possession of the overtime period and never got the opportunity to put the ball in the hands of Aaron Rodgers.
“Let’s go college rules. Just put us on the 25 or whatever it is and let us go at it,” Matthews said after the game, via USA Today’s Tom Pelissero. “But I don’t know. I’m sure it’ll be talked about. It sucks that we don’t have an opportunity.
“But those are the rules right now. We’ve got to play by them. We had an opportunity to stop them on their side of the field and force a punt and kick a field goal to win, and we didn’t do that.”
As Pelissero notes, when the overtime rules were changed to their current format in 2012, there was an alternate proposal that would have given both teams possession in overtime no matter what. Only three teams voted for it, and Green Bay wasn’t one of them.
Matthews correctly pointed out, however, that he probably wouldn’t be saying any of this if his team had been the beneficiary of the rule.
“It sucks that a coin toss can determine that,” Matthews said, “but if that was us on the other side of the coin, we probably wouldn’t be complaining.”
It’s probably worth reexamining the overtime system. Imagine if only one team got the opportunity to bat in extra innings of a baseball game. That said, the Packers are particularly aggrieved here given how the coin toss went, so you can understand their frustrations with this particular situation.
