NFL Overtime Rules Explained: Regular Season vs Playoffs

In the NFL, overtime gives both teams a chance to possess the ball before a game can end (with a few instant-win exceptions like a safety). Regular-season OT is one 10-minute period and can end in a tie; playoff OT uses 15-minute periods and keeps going until someone wins.

That single distinction — can the game end tied, or must it produce a winner — is the reason the rule feels confusing. It's also gotten more confusing because the league has changed it five separate times since 1974, most recently before the 2025 season. Here's exactly how it works heading into 2026, and how it got here.

Regular Season vs Playoffs at a Glance

How Regular-Season Overtime Works Now

Since a 2025 rule change, regular-season overtime works like this:

1. Coin toss. The referee flips a coin at midfield; the visiting team's captain calls it in the air, exactly as before the game.
2. First possession. The team that wins the toss chooses to receive, kick, or pick a goal to defend. They get a possession.
3. Second possession is guaranteed. This is the headline change: even if the first team scores a touchdown on its opening drive, the game does not end. The other team still gets the ball and a chance to answer. Before 2025, an opening-drive touchdown in the regular season ended the game on the spot — the losing team never touched the ball. That's gone now.
4. What happens after both teams have possessed. If the score is still tied once each team has had its opportunity, it flips to true sudden death: the next team to score, by any method, wins.
5. The clock. The whole period is capped at 10 minutes. If time expires while the score is still tied — including a scenario where the first team's drive burns most or all of the clock — the game ends in a tie. There is no second overtime period in the regular season.
6. Timeouts and timing rules. Each team gets 2 timeouts. The last-five-minutes timing rules that apply late in a normal fourth quarter (such as clock stoppages on certain penalties) kick in during overtime as well, and a two-minute warning occurs in the period.

The practical effect: a team that gets the ball first and scores a touchdown can no longer just take a knee and go home. The opponent still gets a real possession, so the leading team increasingly goes for a two-point conversion to try to make the answer harder (if they're up 8, a touchdown alone doesn't tie it).

How Playoff Overtime Works

Postseason overtime is built to guarantee a winner, so it's longer and can repeat:

1. Coin toss, 15-minute periods. Same coin-toss procedure, but each overtime period runs 15 minutes instead of 10.
2. Both teams get a possession, touchdown or not. Like the regular season, a touchdown on the opening possession no longer ends the game outright — the other team gets its own possession to answer.
3. If still tied, sudden death continues. Once both teams have possessed, the next score wins.
4. If the first period ends tied (or a team hasn't completed its possession), play continues into a second period, and if needed a third, fourth, and beyond. The coin toss loser from the previous period gets to choose ball or goal in the next one. There is no maximum number of playoff overtime periods — the 2023 AFC Wild Card game between the Dolphins and Chiefs and other postseason contests have shown the league is prepared to keep playing until a winner emerges.
5. Timeouts reset by "half." Each team gets 3 timeouts to use across the first two overtime periods (treated like a half); if the game reaches a third period, timeouts refresh again.
6. Two-minute warning applies in each period, following the same timing rules as the corresponding quarter would in regulation.
7. Short intermissions. There's a brief intermission before overtime begins and short breaks between periods to keep the game moving — nothing like a full halftime.

Bottom line: a playoff game literally cannot end tied. The 2023 Wild Card overtime thriller between Miami and Kansas City, and the two-overtime 2022 AFC Divisional Round instant classic between Buffalo and Kansas City, are reminders that postseason OT can run long.

What Ends Overtime Immediately

Regardless of regular season or playoffs, a handful of outcomes end the game the instant they happen, even on the very first possession, because they aren't a scoring drive by the offense that currently has the ball:

• A safety. If the offense is tackled in its own end zone, the defense scores 2 points and wins on the spot.
• A defensive touchdown. An interception or fumble return for a touchdown ends it immediately.
• A special-teams touchdown. A blocked kick, punt return, or kickoff return for a score ends it immediately.

These plays end the game instantly because the team that would otherwise be guaranteed a possession is the one that just scored — there's nothing left to guarantee.

Can an NFL Game End in a Tie?

Yes — but only in the regular season, and only rarely. If the score is still level when the 10-minute period expires, the final result is officially a tie, and both teams' records show a "T" rather than a win or loss. For playoff seeding and draft-order purposes, a tie counts as half a win and half a loss in winning-percentage calculations.

Ties are unusual: the NFL has had roughly two dozen regular-season ties since sudden-death overtime began in 1974, and the league went most of a decade with only occasional ones under the post-2012 rules. The new 2025 format hasn't eliminated ties — Green Bay and Dallas played to a 40-40 tie on September 28, 2025, the first tie under the new rule, proving that a wild, back-and-forth overtime can still run out the clock level.

A tie muddies the standings because it affects a team's winning percentage without counting as an outright win or loss for either side, which can matter in tiebreaker math at the end of the season. For how the league sorts out deadlocked teams in the standings, see NFL Tiebreaker Rules, and for how seeding actually shakes out into the bracket, see NFL Playoff Seeding and Bracket Format, Explained.

Timeouts, Coin Toss and Other OT Details

• Coin toss: Same procedure as pregame — the referee tosses at midfield, and the visiting team's captain calls it in the air. The winner chooses to receive, kick, or defend a goal.
• Timeouts: 2 per team in the regular season's single period; 3 per team per "half" of playoff periods.
• Replay: As in regulation, coaches don't get challenge flags in the final minutes/overtime — booth review handles it.
• Two-minute warning: Present in both regular-season and playoff overtime, functioning the same way it does late in a normal quarter.
• Clock and timing rules: Overtime uses standard game-clock rules, including the late-game provisions (like stoppages on certain penalties) that apply in the last five minutes of a normal quarter.

For a broader look at how NFL games actually use the clock — including why a "60-minute" game runs over three hours — see How Long Is an NFL Game and NFL Clock Rules Explained.

How the Overtime Rule Kept Changing

FAQ

Do both teams get the ball in overtime? Yes, in both the regular season and playoffs, both teams are guaranteed a possession opportunity — even if the first team scores a touchdown on its opening drive. The only way a team doesn't get a possession is if the other side scores in a way that ends the game instantly, such as a safety or a defensive/special-teams touchdown, or (in the regular season only) the clock runs out during the first team's possession.

How long is NFL overtime? One 10-minute period in the regular season. In the playoffs, it's 15-minute periods, and the league plays as many as necessary until there's a winner.

Can playoff games end in a tie? No. The postseason keeps playing extra 15-minute periods until one team wins; there is no mechanism for a playoff game to end level.

What ends overtime immediately, even on the first drive? A safety, a defensive touchdown (like a pick-six), or a special-teams touchdown (like a blocked-kick or punt-return score) all end the game the instant they happen, in both the regular season and playoffs.

Does the two-minute warning happen in overtime? Yes, in both regular-season and playoff overtime, following the same timing rules as a normal quarter.

How many timeouts do teams get in overtime? Two per team in the regular season's single period. In the playoffs, it's three per team, refreshed for each new "half" of overtime periods (periods 1–2, then periods 3–4, and so on).

Has a regular-season game ended in a tie under the new 2025 rule? Yes. Green Bay and Dallas played to a 40-40 tie on September 28, 2025, showing that even with both teams guaranteed a possession, a 10-minute period can still run out with the score level.