New York ? The NFL has chosen one proposal for changing its overtime rule: allowing each team at least one possession if a game is tied after regulation.

Whether the league adopts the change at its annual meeting in Phoenix next week remains a big question.

“I can’t make a prediction on that. It’ll be close,” Tampa Bay general manager Rich McKay said Wednesday on a league conference call after presiding over two weeks of competition committee meetings that ended with members split on the issue.

The pressure to change overtime, which has been in effect since 1974, accelerated last season after teams that had the ball first won 10 of the record 25 overtime games played — or 40 percent. But most of the league’s coaches have said they’d prefer to stick with the current system.

McKay said the pressure for change goes back some time, noting that since 1994, the percentage of teams winning on the first possession has escalated for several reasons. Among them: more accurate field goal kickers and the use of a kicking ball that has made kickoffs shorter and given receiving teams better field position.

The rule would give each team at least one possession. If the game is still tied after each team has the ball once, then the game would revert to the sudden-death rule.