As I hung around watching the first week of the NFL season, something was clearly different. The extra point had been moved back. Instead of the kick being roughly 20 yards, it now is about a 33 yard attempt. This is a drastic change, which in my opinion makes the game more enticing. Instead of a touchdown basically being worth 7 points, now it truly is worth six and the team must earn the extra point to make it 7. With this new rule, the two point conversion attempt remains at the 2 yard line, giving teams more of an incentive to go for the two points rather than kicking the extra point.
As you can see in the pictures,there is a large difference between a 20 yardextra point, and a 33 yardextra point. 13 yards may not seem like much, but in the scheme of a
football game, it is enormous. A 20 yard extra point was more or less automatic. In 2013 and2014respectively, all but five teams in the NFL were perfect on extra points. In total, NFL teams converted on 99% of extra point attempts. The NFL saw this as too easy which it clearly is. Itserved as an extra, meaningless play in the football game. So does making it a 33 yard field goal make any difference at all? The answer is yes, especially depending on where the game is being played.
NFL kickers still made roughly 90% of field goals from 30-39 yards, so what is the reason for the rule change? The NFL’s attempt to make the PAT a more strategic play seems to be a failure. They believed moving the extra point kick attempt would cause more teams to go for two points instead of kicking the field goal. In 2014, NFL teams converted a mediocre 47.5%(27 of 56) of their two point attempts. Since the adoption of the two point conversion in 1994, there have only been four seasons with a two point conversion success rate of over 50%. With this poor conversion percentage, would teams really be enticed to go for two instead of kicking a field goal they would make roughly 90% of the time? In my opinion, that is not nearly a good enough incentive to risk going for two.
While the NFL has changed kickoffs for safety reasons, they contradict themselves by changing extra points to make them more competitive. Before the rule change, the extra point was an almost meaningless play that players went, at most, half speed. Now, with the rule change and the decrease in the percentage made, it is sure to make the extra point more physical, and in turn, more collisions will happen. In my opinion, it goes against everything the NFL has been pushing with regards to player safety. They all but eliminated the kickoff by moving kick offs to the 35 yard line. The new extra point now counteracts the kickoff change, which is perplexing.
I understand the thought process behind the rule change regarding the extra point, but in the grand scheme of the NFL attempting to make the game safer, it makes no sense. Moving the kick to make it a 33 yard attempt makes the play much more meaningful and reduces the efficiency of converting the kick. At the same time, this introduces another meaningful play to the already long and grueling football game, which could result in injuries, something the NFL desperately has been trying to limit. We will see how the NFL adjusts to the new extra point distance throughout the season, and I am sure many changes will be made to the rule in the near future before it is perfect
