The NFL spent three years trying to fix overtime. They wanted fairness. They wanted clarity. Instead, the 2025 campaign has delivered pure confusion. It’s not the players struggling with the format, nor is it the coaches. It’s the officials. That reality hit hard Sunday night during the Broncos-Commanders game, exposing a problem that is becoming impossible to ignore.
As the Denver Broncos and Washington Commanders headed into overtime tied at 20, the focus should have been on strategy. But what happened next turned a standard coin toss into another example of referees’ mishandling the most basic mechanics of the rulebook.
How Did the Broncos-Commanders Coin Toss Go Wrong?
The trouble started the moment Commanders punter Tress Way won the toss. He confidently told referee Land Clark, “We’re gonna kick that way,” while pointing down the field. Under the 2025 rules, that phrasing is a problem.
The winning team gets to choose whether to kick or receive, while the loser selects the goal they want to defend. By stating both, Way effectively made both choices, and Clark let it happen.
Clark even asked for clarification, asking, “Kick that way?” and “You’re gonna kick?” Despite the confusion, he granted Washington both advantages before announcing to the stadium, “They will kick this way.” Denver quarterback Bo Nix stayed silent, but the mistake was obvious: The Broncos should have determined the direction of the kick.
This wasn’t a one-off error. In fact, it follows a troubling pattern of officials failing to correct players during the toss. Just last Sunday, Russell Wilson made the same mistake for the New York Giants, choosing both the ball and the direction without any intervention.
The week before that, Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young did the same thing. In Germany, referee Clete Blakeman even announced the wrong home team, forcing him to redo the entire sequence off-camera.
These aren’t harmless blunders, either. The Detroit Lions defeated the Giants in overtime after an incorrect toss procedure, and the Carolina Panthers won their game under similar circumstances. While the Broncos escaped with a walk-off touchdown Sunday, the league knows a playoff game could easily turn on this specific failure. The Broncos’ offense is No. 14 in PFSN’s Offense Impact Score.
The new overtime structure was designed to mirror the postseason format introduced in 2022 and eliminate controversy. Instead, every mishandled toss pushes the NFL closer to a nightmare scenario where a referee’s confusion decides a season. Right now, the biggest threat to overtime fairness isn’t the rules themselves, it’s the coin toss.