The NFL is considering changing overtime rules in the regular season to decrease the advantage for teams who win the coin toss.

“It’s time to rethink the overtime rule,” league executive Troy Vincent said Wednesday at the NFL scouting combine.

Vincent said the Competition Committee agrees overtime rules need to be addressed. Receiving the ball first has become more of an advantage than pre-2011 when it was a sudden death period. Receiving teams won 56.8% of games in overtime from 2017-24, up from 55.4% from 2001-11.

Both teams currently have an opportunity to possess the ball in overtime unless a touchdown is scored on the first possession.

The rules are different in the playoffs. Both teams get a chance to have a possession even if the offense scores a touchdown on the opening drive. That postseason change came after Buffalo’s loss to Kansas City in a divisional round game in January 2022.

Making the overtime rules the same in the regular season is a possible solution, along with extending the period to 15 minutes.

The competition committee will review expansion of the replay assist to include more fouls, but Vincent said “there was no appetite” from the committee to use video replay to throw a flag.

A team could still propose a rule change to do that. For now, if officials miss an obvious penalty such as a facemask, replay assist can’t throw a flag.

The league plans to use its virtual measuring system to determine first downs in 2025. This wouldn’t eliminate the officials who manually spot the ball and use chains to mark the line to gain. The optimal tracking system notifies officiating instantly if a first down was gained after the ball is spotted by hand.

“We used this in the background last season,” said Kimberly Fields, the NFL’s senior vice president of football operations. “The goal for 2025 is to continue to train our techs, who are the ones who will be utilizing the technology, finalizing all of our officiating processes and procedures around virtual measurements and testing the graphics for the broadcast and in-stadium, so fans in the stadium and fans watching on television can see what we’re doing. The chain crew will still be there as backup.”

San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch said the team has begun negotiations with quarterback Brock Purdy about a long-term contract and believes both sides want to get a deal done.

Purdy’s contract extension is one of the main items on the offseason to-do list for San Francisco. He is nearing the end of one of the NFL’s biggest bargains for the 49ers, with one year left on the rookie deal he signed as the last pick of the 2022 draft.

“We have started negotiations,” Lynch said Wednesday at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. “We’re talking. ... I want Brock to be our quarterback as long as we’re here and beyond and we’ll leave it at that.”

Purdy has made less than $1 million a year for his first three seasons and is set to get a small raise in 2025 to about $5.2 million under the league’s proven performance escalator for making the Pro Bowl last season.

The Miami Dolphins are the top-ranked team, followed by the Minnesota Vikings, for the second consecutive season in the NFL Players Association report card.

The Atlanta Falcons, Las Vegas Raiders and Chargers rounded out the top five in the third annual NLPA report card released Wednesday at the NFL scouting combine.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots and Arizona Cardinals were the bottom five.

The Washington Commanders made a huge jump, going from 32nd twice to No. 11.

“That really shows the point of the project,” Tretter said, highlighting owner Josh Harris’ efforts to improve staffing and culture. Commanders coach Dan Quinn was ranked No. 1 by players.

The Falcons leaped from 25th to third and the Chargers went from 30th to fifth.

The Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles fell to 22nd from fourth last year.

colleges

Four University of New Orleans players who’ve been suspended since late January are under investigation for possible NCAA violations related to sports gambling, a person familiar with the situation said.

James White, Jah Short, Dae Dae Hunter and Jamond Vincent have not played since the Privateers’ loss to Incarnate Word on Jan. 27. The reasons for their suspensions were first reported in a social media post by college basketball analyst Jeff Goodman.

New Orleans (4-25, 2-16 Southland) has lost all eight games it has played since the suspensions.

Former Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley will return to the Nittany Lions as assistant quarterbacks coach. McSorley was a three-year starter for the Nittany Lions (2016-18) and a sixth-round pick by Baltimore in the 2019 NFL draft.

The Northwestern women’s basketball team will be assessed two forfeits for not playing January road games at No. 2 UCLA and No. 4 USC, the Big Ten announced. Northwestern had announced Jan. 10 it would not to travel to play UCLA on Jan. 12 and USC on Jan. 15 because of concerns over wildfires in the Los Angeles area. UCLA had offered to play at an off-campus location.

soccer

FC Dallas defender Geovane Jesus will miss his second Major League Soccer season in a row because of a right knee injury. The team said that Jesus was placed on its season-ending injury list and will miss all of the 2025 season.

Jesus spent 2024 recovering after tearing his right ACL during a training session on Sept. 13, 2023. He had another surgery this week to address cartilage damage in the same knee.

Bay FC head of domestic scouting Graeme Abel has resigned after just a week on the job amid allegations of verbal abuse while he was coach at the University of Oregon. Abel coached at Oregon from 2019 until last year. He resigned in October after the Ducks went 5-11-2 overall and 1-8-2 in the Big Ten.

Last April, The Oregonian newspaper detailed allegations made by more than a dozen former players of verbal abuse by Abel. He denied the claims.

A soccer fan who racially abused former Cádiz defender Carlos Akapo during a league match at Granada three years ago has been given a one-year prison sentence by a Spanish court. The supporter, who was also handed a 14-month stadium ban, was caught on camera making monkey gestures towards Akapo, who is Black, during Cádiz’s 0-0 draw at Granada in February 2022.

The fan will likely serve a suspended sentence. In Spain, defendants without previous convictions rarely spend time in jail for sentences of less than two years for a non-physically violent crime.