What are the NFL's overtime rules? Explaining the nuances for regular and postseason play

The score is tied, the final seconds of the fourth quarter are ticking away and both teams have exhausted their timeouts. What happens now? Aside from getting to watch some free football, victory is still in the cards for both teams. However, the rules for this extra play differ slightly depending on whether the game occurs during the 18-week regular season or in the postseason.

Advertisement But how will the OT unfold from a rules standpoint? The Athletic has you covered with a full breakdown. What are OT rules during the regular season? If a regular-season game reaches the end of regulation with a knotted score, the captains for both teams and a referee will conduct a coin toss. The visiting team captain calls heads or tails, and the winner of the toss states if his team would like possession of the ball first or which side of the field they wish to defend.



Given the structure of overtime in the NFL , choosing to be on offense first is usually advantageous. An intermission of no more than three minutes follows, and then a 10-minute period begins in which each team must have the opportunity to play offense. The one exception to this arises when the first team to get the ball scores a touchdown on its opening OT possession.

In that case, the game ends immediately and the other team doesn’t get a chance to play offense. If the first team to play offense doesn’t score a touchdown (instead kicks a field goal, punts or turns the ball over), the opposing team would have a chance to possess the ball. If the score remains tied after each team has possessed the ball, OT continues in sudden-death play until one team scores by any method (touchdown, field goal or safety) and the game ends.

There is one other instance in which the game ends on the first possession and no touchdown is scored. If the team kicking off to start the overtime period scores a safety on the receiving team’s initial possession, the team that kicked off is the winner. Each team gets two timeouts during this period of extra play.

If a team ends regulation with unused timeouts, those are scrapped once the fourth quarter ends. Coaches do not have instant replay challenges during OT. All reviews are initiated by the replay official.

If the score is still equal at the end of the 10-minute overtime period, the game will be recorded as a tie in each team’s records. The 2023 season was the first since 2017 with no tied games. Advertisement What are OT rules during the postseason? Postseason overtime rules are not identical to the regular-season rules because games at this stage of the season cannot end in a tie.

The OT period is 15 minutes long during the postseason and requires both teams have a chance to possess the ball at least once. The exception to this occurs if the team that kicked the ball away to begin OT scores a safety on its opponents’ initial possession. In that case, the game ends immediately with a win for the team that kicked off.

After each team has played on offense, the side with the most points wins. If the score is still tied, the next team to score by any method wins. If the score remains even at the end of the 15 minutes — or if the second team has not completed its initial offensive drive by this point — the teams play another OT period.

Play continues until a winner is determined. If more than one OT period is necessary, there is a two-minute intermission between each OT period. At the beginning of the third overtime period, the captain who lost the initial OT coin toss gets to choose to play offense or pick which end zone his team will defend, unless the team that won the coin toss deferred that choice.

If the game remains tied at the end of a fourth OT, there will be another coin toss, and the teams will keep playing until one team has outscored its opponent. Each team gets three timeouts during a half (two overtime periods), as opposed to two timeouts during OT in the regular season. Required reading (Photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images).