Darren Sproles ran for the game-winning score Saturday.

AP

When Darren Sproles scampered for a 22-yard walk-off touchdown to propel San Diego past Indianapolis in Saturday night's wild-card playoff -- without NFL MVP Peyton Manning so much as touching the football in the extra frame -- you could see the overtime rules debate coming from miles away.

Today, two of SI.com's most respected NFL writers took opposite sides of the argument.

Taking the traditionalist stance, Don Banks says the league should maintain the status quo. "I've come around to the viewpoint that the current sudden-death OT format isn’t broken, and doesn’t need fixing," Banks writes. "Mostly because there is no perfect fix."

One possession each in overtime sounds completely equitable. But no overtime format I’ve heard of would ever be completely equitable. There’s always going to be an inherent advantage to the team that has the ball first, because it doesn’t have the pressure of trying to match a score to keep the game alive.

Then, on the flip side, how is it completely equitable when if you do give up a score first in overtime, you get the ball knowing that you have all four downs to keep the chains moving, rather than having to punt on fourth down, like the situation that the first-possession team faced? The second-possession team has 25 percent more downs to work with in trying to match or beat the other team’s score, because a punt is never going to be part of the equation for a team trailing in overtime.

On the other side, Peter King argues for reform. King's reasoning boils down to a single salient point: The outcome of an NFL game should never depend on a coin flip -- and sometimes it does.

Forget all the stuff about extrapolating what happens when Team B has to forget about punting, or the pressure that Team B would feel if Team A put a touchdown on the board. There’s nothing in football – except for an 8-8 team playing host to a 12-4 team in a playoff game, which I still can’t believe hasn’t been fixed by the league – as unfair as the overtime rule.

Just to state my reasons: In the 35 years since the NFL has had the current overtime system in place, 141 regular-season games have gone to overtime and ended with only one team having possession. So, on average, four times per year, a coin flip plays an inordinately major role in the outcome of an NFL game.

My fix is simple. I think that a coin should be flipped at the start of overtime, with the winning team having the choice of whether to take the ball first. But then, if neither team has the lead after the second possession of overtime, the game enters sudden death. That’s it. Each team is guaranteed one offensive possession, unless the defensive team on the first possession scores.

What's your take? Do you side with Banks or King? Or do you have an alternative solution neither writer touched on?

Debate: Should NFL alter OT rules? [SI.com]