There are only three things I hate about
American soccer: injuries to starting quarterbacks in September, freezing the
kicker before a crucial field goal, and draws.
F**king draws.
Who's better off with them? When there's a
winner and a loser in a game, it makes sense. Some do celebratory dances in the
locker room, while others sit there with stern faces and promise to justify
themselves to the fans in a week. And a tie is like two losing teams who can't
even motivate themselves with this defeat.
On Sunday, the first tie of the 2021 season
was played as Pittsburgh, with quarterback-turned-double-player Mason Rudolph,
failed to beat Detroit. That's the way the question is posed, because the Lions
haven't won a game this season. It's especially important for Detroit to win -
it's the first club in NFL history to finish the season at 0-16. No one likes
to get caught up in stories like this. On the one hand, Detroit's losing streak
is broken. On the other hand, the "win" column is still screaming
zero.
Speaking of columns. Because of the tie,
the NFL divisional tables are bloated by one more column, and it's a real hell
for the perfectionist.
The matchup between the Steelers and Lions
was frankly awful. It wasn't a case of Nobody Deserved to Lose. No, it was a
case of Nobody Worth Winning. The quarterbacks threw one touchdown pass for
two. "Pittsburgh fumbled twice. The last one was especially scary - in
overtime, the Steelers moved into the opponent's half of the field and it
looked like kicker Chris Boswell was about to come out and end this circus. But
Freyermuth dropped the ball, and he was fumbled by the Lyons with 10 seconds to
go.
The Steelers fumble with 8 seconds left in OT and the @Lions recover 👀 #DETvsPIT pic.twitter.com/zu4rY1MqVU
— NFL (@NFL) November 14, 2021
We read a very long, nerdy and poorly
written detective story, and in lieu of a straight answer as to who the killer
was, the author left an open ending.
After the game, Pittsburgh's starting
quarterback Najee Harris (also a fumble, by the way) confessed: he didn't know
there were draws in the NFL. He thought there would be another quarter. He had
never finished a game with a draw before -- there are no such things in schools
and colleges.
Najee Harris said he didn’t know the game could end in a tie until the very end. He was ready to keep playing, but someone told him the game was over. pic.twitter.com/KuxCL0GATd
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) November 14, 2021
Really, that means only one thing: He
didn't watch a lot of pro games. I'm in my 11th year of watching NFL games, and
I've seen 10 draws in that time. In 2017, the NFL cut overtime from 15 minutes
to 10 minutes to reduce the risk of injury, and of course the draw rate went
up, from 3.4% under the old format to 8% under the current format.
There was a famous case in 2008 when
Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb said after the tie with Cincinnati that
he had no idea it happened. You could believe him - it was the second tie in 10
years.
I really hope the draws get cancelled
someday. I don't care how. Let the kickers take turns hitting from 30 yards,
then from 35, and so on. For some reason this idea comes up most often to
Russian fans when you describe the problem of draws, perhaps because of my
soccer past. If you ask me, we should just take away the overtime format.
Yeah, it's not exactly fair either, and
there mathematically one team has the advantage. Honestly, I don't care.
Anything is better than a tie.
