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Tie games in the NFL are controversial, to say the least. I can only think of two times when the fanbase generally agreed that a tied game would be fun to see. There was last year's Week 18 matchup between the Chargers and the Raiders that everyone who wasn't a Steelers fan wanted to see, and there was the 2012 games between the 49ers and the Rams, whose first game ended in a tie and whose second game could have made history for the entire league. The tier list I've made above is a collective list of how many tie games NFL teams have been in since the introduction of overtime in the 1974 season. Teams located further to the left in each tier, excluding the "No Ties" list, reached the tier they currently sit in more recently than teams further to the right in descending order.
I must say, as controversial as they are, the statistics behind the games like Sunday's 20-20 AFC South matchup are incredibly fascinating to me, and I think the meme-ability of a rare sports occurrence makes up for what could have been. Some teams even have what I'll be referring to as a
tienasty, a play on "dynasty" that pretty much means they had so many ties during a smaller period of time.
Here's some other fun facts about NFL tie games that you may not have known. (Yes, I know I keep editing this post and adding to it, there's just so many of these I keep forgetting):
- Since the introduction of overtime, no NFL team has ever finished a season with multiple ties on their W-L-T record
- For anyone who's curious, the 2018 Cleveland Browns currently hold or are tied the record for most overtime games played in a regular season after having already tied in a previous one, with three; the team's overtime W-L-T record ended as 1-2-1
- The 1988-89 Kansas City Chiefs are so far the only teams to finish with an overtime tie on their W-L-T record in consecutive seasons
- The 2021-22 Pittsburgh Steelers just recently had a chance to do this as well, but could not get it done against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday; this conveniently keeps all of my below points still intact
- Coincidentally, both tie games for the Chiefs were road games
- All four of the Cincinnati Bengals's tie games happened:
- In the 21st century
- Against NFC teams
- In even-numbered years
- So far, there are only two pairs of NFL teams that have overtime ties against each other, and they are:
- The Green Bay Packers & the Minnesota Vikings (1978, 2013, 2018)
- Coincidentally, all three tie games were home games for the Packers
- The Cincinnati Bengals & the Philadelphia Eagles (2008, 2020)
- As mentioned above, the 2012 San Francisco 49ers & St. Louis Rams are excluded from this list because their second game did not end in a tie despite both of the teams' meetings going into overtime that year
- Since the 2012 NFL season, which implemented the field goal rule change into regular season overtime games, there has been one tie game every season so far except for the 2015 and 2017 seasons
- Suspiciously, the advent of multiple ties in their following seasons (2016 and 2018) helps keep the average at one tie per season
- The last three of the four total times multiple overtime tie games occurred in a season (1997, 2016, 2018) had said games happen in consecutive weeks
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_tied_games
Source: https://www.espn.com/nfl/standings/_/season/2018/view/expanded
2022 Week 1 Colts/Texans game: https://www.espn.com/nfl/game/_/gameId/401437637