Running extra yards: NFL games last longer despite fewer reviews
Sports
Running extra yards: NFL games last longer despite fewer reviews
If any fans are planning to serve their Thanksgiving meal after an NFL game, don’t bother rushing the turkey to the table — games are stretching out longer. The NFL always aims for games to last about three hours. Through 11 weeks of this season, the average time of game has been 3 hours, 9 minutes, 26 seconds. The league says reviews have actually gone down, but they are taking longer. That’s one reason for the longer games, along with other referee discussions — many not involving replay — and major injuries. The average length of a review has been 41 seconds in 2015. Yet the delays for those reviews can extend an additional 1.5 minutes because often a television timeout starts during a review. Football has not been in the spotlight concerning length of games in recent years the way baseball has. Major League Baseball instituted rules to speed up the game this year.
