Sunday Night Football had highs, lows, but ended somewhere in between when the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers tied at 40 apiece.
It’s an outcome that has some fans at The Star in Frisco feeling very vanilla.
“Everybody was like, meh, like it wasn’t a good ending,” said one fan from Orlando.
“Right now, don’t know what to feel. Usually, you walk out of the game, you’re like aww, you win, you’re like yeah, and now you’re like ‘Ehhhh?’” said a fan from Midland, Texas.
“I don’t like it, but I understand that rules change,” a Packers fan said.
But it isn’t just fans feeling underwhelmed.
“You don’t play this game for ties,” said Cowboys Quarterback Dak Prescott. “Right now it’s tough for me, but guess 10 years in, the first time I’ve ever been a part of, it’s kind of hard to wrap my head around.”
The Cowboys say the last time the team tied was in 1969.
New 2025 NFL regular season rules give both teams the opportunity to possess the ball at least once during overtime. At the end of a 10-minute OT session, if the score is still tied, the game ends in a tie.
The NFL says the rule changed, in part, for player safety.
Dr. Zoricelis Davila is a psychotherapist in North Texas who explained why fans feel unsettled when there’s a tie.
“It feels like a failure. I didn’t achieve something. I didn’t get to where I wanted. I didn’t get to celebrate, or I didn’t get to grieve and so that is unresolved,” said Dr. Davila.
She says fans feel the need for closure and want a winner or loser after four hours of football.