43 Yard PAT's? NFL Might Make Extra Points Longer
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jap
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jap
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Goodall is still searching for a way to make his mark on this league. He is following Pete Rozelle, who may have been the best commissioner in any major sports league to date, and Paul Tagliabue, who realized Rozelle's dream of a 32-team league with eight four-team divisions. Goodall wants to be noted for for something meaningful in NFL history, and he is driving us bonkers with his mostly stupid changes.
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I know how Goodell could make his mark on the league. Come up with a system that ACTUALLY makes the refs responsible for blown calls. Maybe he could also have it where a coach could challenge ONE penalty call per game and that would go to the central office for quick review.
But the last time I heard someone complain about the PAT would have been... oh yeah - NEVER!
But the last time I heard someone complain about the PAT would have been... oh yeah - NEVER!
moklerman
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I've got no problem with the idea. It shouldn't be an automatic point tacked onto a score. If that were the case, they should just award 7 points for a TD. But it is called an "extra" point. You're rewarded for scoring the TD. If you can also score the "extra" point, more power to you, but it shouldn't be 99.6% of a certainty.
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So does that 99.6% include muffed snaps? Not sure how many of those there were - if any. Still - I have never felt any angst over the fact that a PAT was all but a certainty. The choice has always been there. Go for the almost guaranteed 1 point or take the risk and go for 2. Seems pretty simple. It's ONE PLAY - not a drive. Make the choice and move on.
I see the idea being a potentially crappy situation. You march the length of the field and score a TD. Then you lose because rain is blowing sideways and you lost the coin flip and have to kick into the teeth of it? No thanks. Leave it alone.
I see the idea being a potentially crappy situation. You march the length of the field and score a TD. Then you lose because rain is blowing sideways and you lost the coin flip and have to kick into the teeth of it? No thanks. Leave it alone.
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in my best herm Edwards voice, "ramfan503 brings up a good point". He usually uses that phrase as a seg way to him talking about the subject. Unfortunately I have nothing to add. It was just a good point.
.
moklerman
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The problem is, the choice HASN'T always been there. It is only in recent years that they added the 2 point try. And there was plenty of bitching and moaning about that too.
As far as your hypothetical situation, left out is the fact that it would be the same for both teams. In fact, all of the scenarios I've seen offered as an argument against this rule change come down to a scenario where 7 points are needed. But that scenario wouldn't come up as often or in the same way that it does now when 7 points is virtually guaranteed each TD drive. There would be many more 6 point situations and to counter this particular argument, how nice would it be if you were down by 6 and then your team could win with that long XP?
It works both ways and in the long run, would add more excitement to the game IMO.
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Yeah - I realize the two point conversion has only been around for a relatively little while. IIRC you could always run it in but only receive 1 point regardless. You generally only saw that after a botched snap.
I would think it would put us in a decided disadvantage being that we are in a dome and still will likely play in a dome with the new stadium. A team that knows their stadium would know the wind patterns. Aside from that, I really don't think it would add excitement as much as it would piss fans off when their team couldn't convert. Fans of visiting teams would feel jobbed and I just don't see a real benefit for anyone other than a home team like Seattle that has one open end on their stadium.
The kickers already get to decide enough games with a single play or two with game winning field goals. Let the players that play the majority of the game decide the outcome. Don't belittle their 90 yard drive because a kicker either made or missed a 1 point try. Personally, I consider that a travesty.
moklerman
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A touchdown is worth 6 points. Not 7. Regardless of what the kicker does, the offense is awarded what they earned by getting into the end zone. Making teams earn their extra point instead of it being automatic seems like far less of a travesty than the thousands of "going through the motions" XP attempts we all pretty much ignore and have been ignoring for decades.
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The Extra Point Is … Good! (So Stop Trying To Fix It)
Yes, point-afters are easy. But so are gimme putts in golf. There are plenty of changes and improvements the NFL needs to make, but tinkering with the PAT isn’t one of them
By Don Banks
The premise is that the point-after has become pointless. A mere formality of a play. To that I say, what’s wrong with formalities? They have their place. Even in football.
I know it’s not what passes for the popular group-think in the debate over what to do about the extra point in the NFL, but I’m not really hot and bothered that there’s one play in football where not much happens and the outcome is largely a foregone conclusion. The Bucs’ new uniforms, those bother me. The news that the Cleveland Browns—the Cleveland Browns!—are going for a “cutting-edge’’ look starting next year, that almost offends me.
Extra points being too easy for today’s insanely accurate kickers? I’m not feeling the outrage.
Which is why I’m happy to hear the NFL might not be either. According to The MMQB’s Peter King, even though the league might experiment with considerably longer PATs in the preseason, there’s only a very, very slight chance team owners will tinker with the play in the regular season. It could take three or four years of gathering momentum before the NFL deems to make a change in the point-after.
Well, bully that. Score one—rimshot!—for procrastination and foot-dragging. For once the league might not be falling into the change-for-the-sake-of-change trap and deciding to not fix what isn’t broken. Playing around with the extra point is your classic solution in search of a problem.
Here’s my main point about point-afters: So what? They’re gimmes. I get it. But in championship-level golf, they still make you putt those out. They’re not contemplating making pro golfers move the ball back three feet in order to add more drama. And let’s face it, we do tend to love those memorable misses from six inches or closer, which always make the weekend duffer crowd exalt with a smug sense of satisfaction.
It’s the same way we feel when we watch the human element come into play every once in a while with baseball’s intentional walk, when somebody’s pitcher can’t seem to lob four pitches way outside and winds up sailing one to the backstop—or worse, over the plate where the batter can take a free hack at the meatball. A rarity, to be sure. But that’s what makes them worth waiting for. (I digress, but to this day, I haven’t been able to forgive A’s reliever Rollie Fingers for suckering my boyhood baseball hero, the Reds’ Johnny Bench, on that faux intentional walk turned strikeout in the 1972 World Series. A dastardly deception by a man who still wears a handlebar mustache.)
And where exactly did the idea start that the NFL is in dire need of a boost when it comes to excitement? So the PAT has become a tiny little breather built into what is still a riveting game. Fine. Does anybody really suffer for it? We can’t even abide one moment in today’s game when we are not entertained to the maximum?
There’s the notion that point-afters in their current form have become a waste of our valuable time. So automatic as to not even warrant our attention. Try telling that to Tony Romo. Just mention the words “Seattle, 2006 playoffs, bobbled snap,’’ and then back up quickly. It was a 19-yard field goal attempt that Romo botched the hold on, costing Dallas a 21-20 last-second loss in his first career postseason start. But a 19-yard field goal and a PAT are one in the same. That was fairly dramatic, as I recall.
The NFL certainly has room for improvement and upgrades, and change has to be part of the equation. But providing fans with more drama on game day is not one of the league’s most pressing issues. Nobody is going to stop watching football if the NFL doesn’t do something about its point-after problem and the tiny lull in the action it produces. You might have noticed the fan interest, television ratings, ticket sales and coverage decisions the league has inspired over the past 20 years or so? The phrase “through the roof’’ comes to mind.
I don’t get those who apparently feel cheated if every play doesn’t rise to the level of can’t-miss viewing. This is not baseball’s American League adopting the designated hitter in 1973 to try and juice the game’s offensive potential, in order to get butts in the seats at the ballpark. The NFL doesn’t need an injection of further excitement, or to introduce innovations into the game just to keep us interested. We’re hooked. They know it. And it shows.
To be sure, there are pressing problems to be fixed in the NFL. But the humble little extra point doesn’t strike me as one of them. Any time or energy spent on improving the PAT seems to be attention that could have been better focused elsewhere. Certainly the game has to keep evolving and getting smarter.
In terms of both player safety and the updating of the game’s playing rules, the status quo isn’t the safest of ground to stand on, and I totally understand the continued study of kickoffs and where to draw the line in terms of the physical costs incurred by that traditional part of the game. But moving the PAT around to figure out where the conversion success ratio becomes acceptable to everyone? With apologies to chief advocate Bill Belichick, it sounds like a rather trivial pursuit.
I don’t really care what the league tries in the preseason by way of experiment with the rulebook, because, well, you’ve seen the NFL’s preseason. It can be tough to watch for even diehards. But a 42 or 43-yard extra-point attempt in the preseason, as is reportedly being discussed by the league’s agenda-setting competition committee?
That’s clearly an over-reaction, especially if the league plans to continue awarding three times that many points for any old chip-shot field goal of say, 19 to 35 yards. Where’s the logic and balance of that approach to kicking specialists?
Leave the near-automatic PAT alone, NFL. It’s not a pointless exercise that serves no purpose, and I almost like having something you can count on in a game that has changed so much in recent years. The NFL should recognize it has far bigger moves to ponder than where to locate the snap, the hold and the kick after touchdowns.
I’m in the minority perhaps, but I hope this is one rules debate that goes nowhere with the league’s decision-makers, eventually fading from our radar screens. The NFL should stick with tradition and keep going for one from the 2. The call on the PAT … It’s good. And doesn’t need fixing.
Yes, point-afters are easy. But so are gimme putts in golf. There are plenty of changes and improvements the NFL needs to make, but tinkering with the PAT isn’t one of them
By Don Banks
The premise is that the point-after has become pointless. A mere formality of a play. To that I say, what’s wrong with formalities? They have their place. Even in football.
I know it’s not what passes for the popular group-think in the debate over what to do about the extra point in the NFL, but I’m not really hot and bothered that there’s one play in football where not much happens and the outcome is largely a foregone conclusion. The Bucs’ new uniforms, those bother me. The news that the Cleveland Browns—the Cleveland Browns!—are going for a “cutting-edge’’ look starting next year, that almost offends me.
Extra points being too easy for today’s insanely accurate kickers? I’m not feeling the outrage.
Which is why I’m happy to hear the NFL might not be either. According to The MMQB’s Peter King, even though the league might experiment with considerably longer PATs in the preseason, there’s only a very, very slight chance team owners will tinker with the play in the regular season. It could take three or four years of gathering momentum before the NFL deems to make a change in the point-after.
Well, bully that. Score one—rimshot!—for procrastination and foot-dragging. For once the league might not be falling into the change-for-the-sake-of-change trap and deciding to not fix what isn’t broken. Playing around with the extra point is your classic solution in search of a problem.
Here’s my main point about point-afters: So what? They’re gimmes. I get it. But in championship-level golf, they still make you putt those out. They’re not contemplating making pro golfers move the ball back three feet in order to add more drama. And let’s face it, we do tend to love those memorable misses from six inches or closer, which always make the weekend duffer crowd exalt with a smug sense of satisfaction.
It’s the same way we feel when we watch the human element come into play every once in a while with baseball’s intentional walk, when somebody’s pitcher can’t seem to lob four pitches way outside and winds up sailing one to the backstop—or worse, over the plate where the batter can take a free hack at the meatball. A rarity, to be sure. But that’s what makes them worth waiting for. (I digress, but to this day, I haven’t been able to forgive A’s reliever Rollie Fingers for suckering my boyhood baseball hero, the Reds’ Johnny Bench, on that faux intentional walk turned strikeout in the 1972 World Series. A dastardly deception by a man who still wears a handlebar mustache.)
And where exactly did the idea start that the NFL is in dire need of a boost when it comes to excitement? So the PAT has become a tiny little breather built into what is still a riveting game. Fine. Does anybody really suffer for it? We can’t even abide one moment in today’s game when we are not entertained to the maximum?
There’s the notion that point-afters in their current form have become a waste of our valuable time. So automatic as to not even warrant our attention. Try telling that to Tony Romo. Just mention the words “Seattle, 2006 playoffs, bobbled snap,’’ and then back up quickly. It was a 19-yard field goal attempt that Romo botched the hold on, costing Dallas a 21-20 last-second loss in his first career postseason start. But a 19-yard field goal and a PAT are one in the same. That was fairly dramatic, as I recall.
The NFL certainly has room for improvement and upgrades, and change has to be part of the equation. But providing fans with more drama on game day is not one of the league’s most pressing issues. Nobody is going to stop watching football if the NFL doesn’t do something about its point-after problem and the tiny lull in the action it produces. You might have noticed the fan interest, television ratings, ticket sales and coverage decisions the league has inspired over the past 20 years or so? The phrase “through the roof’’ comes to mind.
I don’t get those who apparently feel cheated if every play doesn’t rise to the level of can’t-miss viewing. This is not baseball’s American League adopting the designated hitter in 1973 to try and juice the game’s offensive potential, in order to get butts in the seats at the ballpark. The NFL doesn’t need an injection of further excitement, or to introduce innovations into the game just to keep us interested. We’re hooked. They know it. And it shows.
To be sure, there are pressing problems to be fixed in the NFL. But the humble little extra point doesn’t strike me as one of them. Any time or energy spent on improving the PAT seems to be attention that could have been better focused elsewhere. Certainly the game has to keep evolving and getting smarter.
In terms of both player safety and the updating of the game’s playing rules, the status quo isn’t the safest of ground to stand on, and I totally understand the continued study of kickoffs and where to draw the line in terms of the physical costs incurred by that traditional part of the game. But moving the PAT around to figure out where the conversion success ratio becomes acceptable to everyone? With apologies to chief advocate Bill Belichick, it sounds like a rather trivial pursuit.
I don’t really care what the league tries in the preseason by way of experiment with the rulebook, because, well, you’ve seen the NFL’s preseason. It can be tough to watch for even diehards. But a 42 or 43-yard extra-point attempt in the preseason, as is reportedly being discussed by the league’s agenda-setting competition committee?
That’s clearly an over-reaction, especially if the league plans to continue awarding three times that many points for any old chip-shot field goal of say, 19 to 35 yards. Where’s the logic and balance of that approach to kicking specialists?
Leave the near-automatic PAT alone, NFL. It’s not a pointless exercise that serves no purpose, and I almost like having something you can count on in a game that has changed so much in recent years. The NFL should recognize it has far bigger moves to ponder than where to locate the snap, the hold and the kick after touchdowns.
I’m in the minority perhaps, but I hope this is one rules debate that goes nowhere with the league’s decision-makers, eventually fading from our radar screens. The NFL should stick with tradition and keep going for one from the 2. The call on the PAT … It’s good. And doesn’t need fixing.
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I love it! With this becoming a crazy high scoring league, this would make for high stakes drama after every touchdown. The extra point or points become nail biters for the fans.
Ram Quixote
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Count me among those who think making the PAT more difficult is much ado about nothing. It still comes down to a fucking FG.
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Meanwhile, kickers were a perfect 12/12 in FG under 20 yards last year. I guess we shouldnt allow that either?
moklerman
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I've long felt FG's should be proportionate. 30 yards and under? 1 point. 30-40, 2 points. 40+, 3 points.
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Disagree, teams should be looking for gaining yardage, never should be going backwards to gain advantage or be forced too. If you're trailing by 3 points, and have the ball on the 12 and its 3rd and goal? Why not take an intentional sack back to the 23 yard line to get additional points?
I'm in the why fix something that aint broke catagory. Its 1 point, and the icing on the cake of scoring a TD. I'd say if anything, make the goal posts more narrow.
moklerman
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I'm not against that either. I actually think it's one of the good things about the AFL. But there's always going to be some way to manipulate the system. Sure, a team could take a sack to make their field goal attempt longer with my hypothetical change but it would make it harder for them to make it and increase their chances of missing.
My point is, I'm not opposed to change on principle. In particular, the XP isn't something sacred IMO. I wasn't against adding the 2-pt option and I wouldn't be against moving the XP back so there's at least some intrigue to the play. I wouldn't even be against them making a TD worth 7 points unless you want to go for 2. The XP kick is useless and boring as it stands.
-X-
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I think this idea is stupid. I rather liked the previous proposal of forcing teams to go for 2 instead of kicking an extra point. That way it's 6 or 8. I do agree that the extra point is just a gimme. You hardly ever see those miss, and when they do it's even more seldom that it affects the outcome of the game, so just get rid of it.
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Joe Gibbs suggests eliminating extra points — and even field goals
Posted by Michael David Smith on March 7, 2014
Getty Images
Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs is all for eliminating the extra point. But why stop there?
Gibbs told Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio that he wouldn’t mind getting rid of field goals in addition to extra points. Why should 11 football players have to march the ball down the field only to put the team’s fate on the foot of a puny kicker? Gibbs thinks that if you want to give out partial points to a drive that gets stopped short of the end zone, award points for a team that gets inside the 10-yard line or the 5-yard line but fails to score.
“Even field goals, you know what I mean? I was one who wanted to let the team decide,” Gibbs said. “You get to the 10 you get one point, you get to the 5 you get two. I’m for anything like that where the team — that’s 11 guys — help determine the outcome of the game. Not one person kicking something.”
Gibbs is an old-school coach whose career started back in the days when men were men and kickers were expected to play another position, not just specialize. So it’s not surprising that when Gibbs thinks of a team of 11 guys determining the outcome of a game, he’s not thinking of one of those guys being a kicker.
But eliminating field goals isn’t even up for discussion in the NFL. Anyone who wants to de-emphasize kicking would be wise to keep the focus on extra points.
Posted by Michael David Smith on March 7, 2014
Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs is all for eliminating the extra point. But why stop there?
Gibbs told Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio that he wouldn’t mind getting rid of field goals in addition to extra points. Why should 11 football players have to march the ball down the field only to put the team’s fate on the foot of a puny kicker? Gibbs thinks that if you want to give out partial points to a drive that gets stopped short of the end zone, award points for a team that gets inside the 10-yard line or the 5-yard line but fails to score.
“Even field goals, you know what I mean? I was one who wanted to let the team decide,” Gibbs said. “You get to the 10 you get one point, you get to the 5 you get two. I’m for anything like that where the team — that’s 11 guys — help determine the outcome of the game. Not one person kicking something.”
Gibbs is an old-school coach whose career started back in the days when men were men and kickers were expected to play another position, not just specialize. So it’s not surprising that when Gibbs thinks of a team of 11 guys determining the outcome of a game, he’s not thinking of one of those guys being a kicker.
But eliminating field goals isn’t even up for discussion in the NFL. Anyone who wants to de-emphasize kicking would be wise to keep the focus on extra points.