A day ago the Washington Redskins (I will not call them by their new PC name) and the New York Giants finished their game ( in a 27-27 tie after a single overtime.
Some people are unaware that a game can possibly end in a tie in the NFL but that is just because it is exceptionally rare that it ever does happen.
I didn't watch the game because it was on at stupid o'clock due to the time difference but the sport news cycle was aflood with talk about how it was this person's fault or that person's fault. There was a strange moment at the very end of the game where the offense just stood there and watched the clock tick down when they could have kicked a field goal but didn't and that was definitely odd.
Any notions of a gambling fix being in is very unlikely because betting on a tie would be something that would be seriously rare if it is even offered at all and the over under was already met. There was no "fix" reason for this to happen intentionally unless it is discovered that someone made $20 million on a seriously long-shot bet on a tie.
But let's have a look at how exceedingly rare a tie is in the NFL. They used to happen all the time previous to 1974 because there was no Overtime. OT periods are singular and no matter how long it takes, both teams are allowed a full possession. There is a 10 minute clock limit, but unless both teams have had the ball one time, this is just for show. There isn't much reason to run out the clock in OT unless something really odd happens like one team is up by a field goal and both teams have already had the ball one time. Passing tends to be more conservative in OT because an interception would be even more devastating in overtime than it would be normally.
A rule was passed in 1974 to establish Overtime so that games would stop ending in ties because, I guess, Americans really don't like ties.
Since 1974, which was over 50 years ago in case you are bad at math, there has been only 31 ties in all of the games that have been played. I did some computations quickly and found out that over 18,000 games have been played since then. This puts the opportunity for a tie based solely on statistics at 0.24%. That would be a really risky bet again, if it even exists as an option.
Even though this is the case, the only team that has never had a tie that is currently in the NFL are the Jacksonville Jaguars. This of course has a lot to do with them not being a team when the old rules existed whereas most of the current teams did.
There was another team that was added when the Jaguars were added and that is my team, the Carolina Panthers. They had a tie vs the Bengals back in 2014. When Carolina missed their field goal attempt nobody was surprised, but when both teams missed it was a bit of a shock. This was the year that Carolina managed to win a mere 3 games in most of the regular season and then somehow magically managed to win their last 4. They went to the playoffs and shocked the world when they won their first game in the tournament as well.
getting back to ties: This is a question of some contention in NFL circles. People do not like ties in American Football and it isn't allowed in college football at all. There is talk about eliminating it in the pros again by having the games continue until a winner is determined. In the playoffs ties are impossible. There are a lot of people that want to see this happen in the regular season, probably especially the people at the stadium who were likely very confused about what was going on.
There was no incentive for either team to tie. I can't imagine any situation where there would be one, so none of this really makes any sense.
