I always knew Jeffrey Lurie was a pragmatic type of guy.

Speaking on Tuesday at the NFL’s Annual Meeting in Arizona, the Eagles’ owner was asked straight-up if he would change the league’s overtime layout, a question that stems from the Kansas City Chiefs’ proposal to tweak the rules to allow both teams an offensive possession.

Said Lurie:

I would. I would like to change overtime. We talked a lot to the competition committee about changing overtime. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Personally, I don’t like the shortened overtime in the regular season because I think it gives even more value to the winner of the coin toss. So if you get the ball first, and you have a seven minute drive or nine minute drive, that’s taking up 70% to 90% of the time period of regular season overtime now. It makes no sense to me. Some day I hope we can get that changed.

There are a lot of ways, I think another possibility is try to avoid the coin toss and have other mechanisms (to determine possession). One of the ideas I floated was the team that scores the most touchdowns (in regulation) has the advantage of getting the ball first. Often it will be a tie, but those times when you score more touchdowns, we award that. You want to avoid a coin toss as best you can, I think.

100% correct. There’s absolutely zero reason why possession should be determined by a coin flip, when one team is capable of walking it off with a touchdown on the opening drive.

Complainers always say, “well the defense needs to make a stop,” which is a dumb argument because you’re assuming that both phases of the game are equal, when they are not.

I explained it this way a few months ago, after the jump:

The best way to illustrate what I’m talking about is to take the ridiculous NFL overtime rules and apply them to other sports.

Take tennis, for instance. Imagine Roger Federer wins a coin toss and elects to serve. Rafael Nadal doesn’t get to serve, Federer hits four aces, and the game is over.

Are you going to sit here and tell me that Nadal should have broken his serve? No, because breaking serve is measurably harder than holding serve. That’s why players alternate service in a tiebreaker. It’s the same thing in volleyball and ping pong. Are you gonna tell me that the serving team should be given a walk-off scenario? I hope not.

I could sit here and give you a million examples, but you get the point. If a coin flip is going to determine an offensive possession or service, then the fairest way to write the rules is to allow the opposing team an opportunity to matchInstead we’re rolling out tired defenses against elite quarterbacks in a sport where the offense is typically on the front foot, especially in the modern day NFL, where recent rule changes have proven advantageous to offensive units.

End of story. The most fair and reasonable way to do this is to allow both teams a possession or come up with a better way to determine possession than a simple coin flip. More than anything, I was bummed that Pat Mahomes sat on the bench the entirety of overtime in the AFC Championship Game. We didn’t even get to see him take the field in OT. Not only is it dumb from a rules standpoint, but also from a fan excitement and marketing standpoint as well.

Jeffrey Lurie understands this and will be on the right side of history when these changes are inevitably made. I find his “more touchdowns” idea intriguing, though he’s correct when he says a tie game is often going to have the same amount of TDs scored by each team. But theoretically you could have a 13-13 game where one team kicked two field goals and scored a touchdown with an extra point,, while the other team scored two touchdowns and failed a two-point conversion. In that case the more aggressive offensive team wins possession. It’s not the worst idea in the world and it would benefit teams like.. Lurie’s Eagles… who have an aggressive coach….

But Lurie is on the right path here and I hope we move this thing forward. For what it’s worth, Kansas City’s proposal was tabled until the owner meetings in May, so we’ll learn more then.