Yes, you can tie in the NFL, but only in the regular season ; playoff games must always have a winner.

Quick Scoop: Core Answer

  • Regular-season NFL games can end in a tie if the score is still even after one 10-minute overtime period.
  • In the playoffs , games continue with additional overtime periods until one team wins; ties are not allowed because a team has to advance.
  • In the standings, a tie counts as half a win and half a loss when calculating winning percentage.

How Ties Happen in the NFL

  • If a regular-season game is tied after four quarters, it goes to a 10-minute overtime with special rules about possession and sudden death.
  • If, after that 10-minute overtime, the score is still tied, the game simply ends with no more periods played and is recorded as a tie.

Why the NFL Still Allows Ties

  • The league keeps ties partly to avoid games dragging on too long, which helps with player safety and scheduling.
  • Ties are relatively rare, so the NFL accepts the occasional anticlimactic ending in exchange for limiting total game length.

Ties And The Standings

  • In the standings, a team’s record might look like 9–7–1, and that “1” tie is treated as half a win and half a loss for playoff calculations.
  • When teams finish with the same won-lost-tied percentage , official tiebreaker rules decide seeding and playoff spots.

Fun Context & History

  • Some franchises have more ties than others in the modern overtime era; for example, the Packers and Eagles have been involved in several notable ties.
  • Confusion about ties still pops up with newer fans, which keeps this question trending in forums and game-day discussions every season.

TL;DR: You can tie in the NFL in the regular season (after one overtime period stays even), but you cannot tie in the playoffs—those games keep going until someone wins.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.