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It was a weird week in the NFL, and naturally, the lunacy extended to fantasy football leagues. Some fans may have found it utterly preposterous that many players in the Eagles-Bengals game were completely unaware that if the overtime period would end without either team scoring, the game would be over.

Perhaps Donovan McNabb, who was quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News as saying, "I've never been a part of a tie. I never even knew that was in the rulebook," also has never looked at the NFL standings in a newspaper to see where his team stood in the standings. If he did, he might have seen that "T" column right there next to the "W" column and the "L" column and figured it out.

What was even more mind-boggling was his follow-up comment: "I hate to see what happens in the Super Bowl or I hate to see what happens in the playoffs. You have to settle with a tie." I guess he failed to notice not only the overtime playoff game he took part in, back in 2004 against the Packers, but also the double-overtime game that the Panthers played the day before to earn a trip to the NFC championship game against his Eagles.

But after going to my mailbag this week, maybe it's not so hard to believe after all. Perhaps motivated by Sunday's tie, many fantasy owners realized they had no idea what happens in their league if a playoff game were to end in a tie, or even what should be done in those rare situations.

Jon from Pennsylvania was one of the many letter writers who were fit to be tied: "I'm in a league with some friends, and our settings are 100 percent ESPN standard. Our [league manager], though a great guy, isn't quite a fantasy football expert, and goes by the philosophy that he wants to keep everything as normal and standard as possible. Our league settings keep all tie games during the regular season as a tie, but there is nothing in our settings or rules that addresses the issue of a tie game in the playoffs. Thinking ahead, I wondered what would happen in the case of a tie game in the playoffs, since I certainly wouldn't want to see a tie game come up and have a bunch of controversy over who should win and advance. I tried to search ESPN's site, and the best thing I could find was that a team with the higher playoff seed would win the game. My question is: Is this 'standard'? It just doesn't seem quite right to me. In your opinion, what is the best tiebreaker? I talked with the LM about this last night while we were playing poker, and he had no idea what our settings were, and his answer was that it's whatever the standard policy is. I'm thinking that we should have the league vote on what the tiebreaker should be. What are your thoughts?"

To be clear, Jon, the ESPN.com standard settings do say that if there is a tie in a playoff matchup, the team with the higher seed wins. The beauty of playing fantasy football, though, is that a league always can choose to use whatever rules it prefers. That's why you can choose to customize your league's rules if you don't want to abide by the standard. Certainly, with an inexperienced league manager, it makes sense to allow him to get his feet wet using rules that have been laid out for him. Once he has had a few seasons under his belt, it's far more likely that he'll be comfortable in straying from the safety of not having to make any decisions on how to play the game. However, although there's nothing wrong with allowing ties to remain unbroken during the regular season, when the playoffs come around, you need to determine a winner, or else why have playoffs in the first place? It's simply not wise to be unclear as to what the tiebreaking procedure will be.

Now, judging by the incredibly laissez-faire attitude of your league manager, I expect that he will not call for a vote, and that he'll simply rule that the higher seed wins in the event of a tie. Some people think that's fair, in that the better team "earned" its higher seed during the regular season. Personally, I don't like it, especially because wins and losses in the regular season are often the result of the luck of the draw when it comes to the schedule. Certainly that's a part of the game as well, but to give the championship to the 5-seed instead of the 6-seed, when the 6-seed may well have outscored that team by 100 points over the entire season, doesn't work for me.

In the end, Jon, because no universal set of rules for fantasy football exists, there is no standard way to break a tie. However, here are just a few options you might decide to choose from, should your league members decide they want the winner of a playoff game to be based on the stats of the week when the game is played:

1. Declare overtime players: In addition to setting the regular lineup, each owner should rank bench players in order of preference. If the game ends in a dead heat, the league manager will add to each team's total the points earned by the first player on this list, and will continue to do so, adding one player for each team until the tie is broken.

2. Eliminate the dead weight: In most leagues, because the kicker and team defense are an afterthought, if the game ends in a tie with them, remove them from the equation. If a team is about to win a playoff game only because Shaun Suisham scored 15 points, that team probably isn't really that deserving of a victory.

3. Cut the flex: If your league uses a flex spot or some other wild-card position, you're really comparing apples to oranges. In the event of a tie, take that wild card out of the mix, and if you're still tied, count only the stats of the top-scoring quarterback, the top-scoring running back and the top-scoring wide receiver. This streamlined lineup should settle the score.

4. Advance both teams: One week wasn't enough to settle things? In real life, you couldn't have a three-way battle the following week, but in fantasy, why not? When two teams tie in the playoffs, both advance to the next round to face the next opponent, with the best score of all three teams winning. In the event that your Week 16 championship game ends in a tie, replay the game in Week 17. Sure, it's not ideal, as some star players could get benched in the NFL after the first quarter, but at least both teams had the chance to win the title outright in Week 16, and it's a better idea than going to a coin toss.

Remember, as long as you decide on your tiebreaking methodology before the playoffs begin and everyone in the league gets a chance to voice an opinion on the matter, it doesn't matter what you choose to use. Be as standard or imaginative as you want. Just make sure you have something in place, else there will be trouble.

Before we go for this week, we need to address one more letter from Josh in Maryland: "Hey AJ. My issue concerns the Chargers-Steelers game; specifically whether the touchdown at the end of the game should count for the Steelers' D/ST. My league's game was between two 5-5 teams fighting to make the playoffs, and the matchup was decided by 3.55 points, so obviously the 6-point defensive score wins/loses it. I (the commish) am not involved in the matchup in question. My question is, since the NFL has admitted that the call was a mistake, and the touchdown should have counted, should I do what they refuse to do and change the score to reflect this?"

Oh, Josh. Leagues have a lot of leeway in their rules and how they choose to play the game, but the one thing I think we can all agree upon is that the results should be based on what actually happened and not what we think should have happened. You cannot count the touchdown that Troy Polamalu scored in your league because he didn't score a touchdown. The final score of that game is 11-10. It's not 17-10, and it's not 18-10, so you can't add an extra point for Jeff Reed because he didn't kick one on that play Sunday, even though he would have been required to attempt one had the Steelers' score counted.

Referees make mistakes all the time, but even though this was on the final play of the game, it doesn't mean you have any justification in changing the actual game stats to suit your own personal whims. How many times have you seen a touchdown called back by a holding call that, after looking at the replay, clearly shouldn't have been called? Do you plan on going back and counting that score, too? Or what about the touchdown run when the player clearly did not cross the plane of the goal line before his knee touched the ground, but the opposing coach didn't ask for a review? Everybody watching knows it was a bad call, and the league may even admit as much the following day.

It still doesn't mean you take six points away from that player's fantasy points total, Josh. Don't take the "fantasy" part of "fantasy football" too far.

AJ Mass is a fantasy football, baseball and college basketball analyst for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.