Seahawks, Cardinals set football back 100 years with overtime draw: Six takeaways

Seahawks, Cardinals set football back 100 years with overtime draw: Six takeaways

Appropriately, it feels like neither team should have won this week's 'Sunday Night Football' game

     Ryan Wilson

 mugshot by Ryan Wilson

 @ryanwilson_07

5h ago • 3 min read

 

If you love suspect coaching, horrible special teams and offensive football before the advent of the forward pass, all sandwiched around superb defense, Sunday night's Seahawks-Cardinals game was your Super Bowl.

Added bonus: There was overtime, all 15 minutes of it, and the proceedings, mercifully, ended in a 6-6 tie after kickers for both teams botched imminently makeable, potential game-winners. For the glass-half-full football aficionado, this game had everything. For the NFL, which is in the midst of a ratings crisis and prefers points to punts, this was no doubt a nightmare. But who knows, maybe the novelty of a game in the year of our Lord two-thousand sixteen ending with each team managing just six points was such a novelty that the morbidly curious tuned in for the duration.

While we wait for the ratings to come out, here are six takeaways from that magical evening.

1. (Not very) fun facts

This was the first tie without a touchdown since 1972, when the Eagles and Cardinals tied 6-6.

The Seahawks had five first downs in regulation -- all of regulation -- which would have been the lowest first-down total of the season. Thanks to overtime, however, Seattle ended with 11 first downs.

This is the lowest scoring overtime tie in NFL history.

This is the first tie since 2014, when the Panthers-Bengals game ended 37-37.

Since the modern overtime rules were created in 1974, this is the 21st time a game has ended in a tie.