Thought-experiment time. What are your five favourite extra-point moments? Exclude Tony Romo fumbling the snap for all the legions of Dallas Cowboy haters out there. Stumped? Drawing a blank? Of course you are, because the extra point is a benign activity, void of any significant meaning. The intentional walk in baseball—as boring as it is—at least has strategy wrapped around it. And if you aren’t careful, a sly baserunner might advance on a poorly delivered deliberate ball. The extra point in football is a formality—as procedural as a fire drill where everyone involved is going through the motions.
This is why there is a growing movement to change football’s non-play. At the NFL owners meetings, proposals were discussed to change the extra point as early as next season. The competition committee is expected to vote on proposals when they reconvene in May.
As a refresher, both a single extra point and a two-point conversion currently take place from the two-yard line. (That makes it a 19-yard kick–in other words, a chip shot.) Most years the average success rate of two-point conversions in the NFL has been around 50 percent while that number for PATs jumps up to just under 100 percent. Last year just five single-pointers were missed for a conversion rate of 99.6 percent.
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There has long been talk of moving the extra point back to the 15-yard line, making it a 32-yard kick. The thing is, that doesn’t really change the decision making process for most coaches as NFL kickers make that kick at around 98 percent.
The opposite thought process is moving the ball up to the one-yard line for both extra-point kicks and two-point conversions, thus making it a tougher choice for coaches. The problem is if you move the two-point conversion to the one, the probability of a score goes up to only around the 60-percent range. Human nature tells us that traditionally risk-adverse NFL coaches (Chip Kelly notwithstanding) will still go for one.
The most radical idea has been put forth by the Indianapolis Colts. They are proposing a system in which three points are up for grabs over the course of two plays—under the plan, if a team opts for two and is successful they would then get to kick a 50-yard FG for an additional point.
If that immediately strikes you as an Arena League or XFL-like ploy to drum up interest, you aren’t alone. The Colts simply proposed it to kickstart the dialogue around making change.
The NFL hasn’t changed any scoring rules since they added the two-point conversion in 1994—around 40 years after it was adopted by the NCAA. The league that has changed player-safety and code-of-conduct rules midseason has been glacial in the way it’s approached its scoring.
Bill Belichick has been vocal about the rules around the play being changed. “I would be in favour of not seeing it be an over 99-percent conversion rate. It’s virtually automatic,” he said. “That’s just not the way the extra point was put into the game. It was an extra point that you actually had to execute and it was executed by players who were not specialists—they were position players. It was a lot harder for them to do.”
Belichick also knows only bad things can happen on the play as his star tight end Rob Gronkowski was hurt blocking for one in 2012.
But if the rules committee is going to go so far as to over-incentivize the two-pointer just to limit the amount of one-point kicks, why not just legislate the PAT right out of the game? Kickers are still needed for place kicking and kickoff duties so their employment isn’t affected. Plus, no one’s staying in their seats–either at home or at the game–to make sure the PATs go through the uprights.
If football was invented today I highly doubt extra points would be part of the equation. As the game reinvents itself to remain on top of the sporting landscape, league decision-makers would do well to free themselves from the shackles of the most irrelevant play in sports.