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Shorter overtimes are among the changes that will be coming to NFL games in 2017.

NFL team owners approved shortening overtime in the preseason and regular season from 15 to 10 minutes at the Spring League Meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, a league official told NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport. The approval comes after the proposal was initially presented to owners during the Annual League Meeting in March.

As NFL Network's Judy Battista pointed out, the rule change is aimed at improving player safety. There have been concerns about the number of additional plays teams undergo while playing a full 15-minute overtime period, especially when one of the teams is subject to playing its next game on a short week.

Some teams were initially concerned the condensed time period would limit their ability to control the ball during the extra frame, but it appears those worries have eased, at least for now.

Although the idea of a 10-minute overtime has been a polarizing issue, the change shouldn't lead to a significant increase in tie scores. According to NFL Research, there have been 83 overtime games over the last five seasons, 22 of them lasting at least 10 minutes into overtime (the average time elapsed in overtime in the last five years is 7 minutes, 43 seconds). There have been five games that ended in a tie in those five seasons, an average of one per year. If overtime had ended after 10 minutes, there would have been 16 total ties, for an average of 3.2 times over a 512-game season.

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