Yostbound and Down

May 19th, 2015 at 7:08 PM ^

A good point that was raised by Chris Brown (Smart Football) is this essentially eliminates fake extra points, botched snaps that the holder can make a play out of, etc. That's reason enough not to change it. I guess it's interesting as a thought experiment this year though. .

I like the other rule change which allows defenses to return for points.

Yostbound and Down

May 19th, 2015 at 8:31 PM ^

I have no idea of the frequency but I assume it's rare...probably as rare as a guy blowing a 15 yard field goal under normal conditions. All this rule opens up is the possibility that in windy/bad weather, which at least half the league doesn't regularly face, there's a great possibility of a miss.

I would have rather they just eliminate the kick entirely.

Edit: yeah it's more than a fifteen yarder i'm forgetting the endzone. 32 yarder. Still as East German Judge pointed out, a pretty high %.

snarling wolverine

May 19th, 2015 at 9:01 PM ^

I could see that in cases where the player who scored gets injured on the play - it would cut down on players faking injuries to avoid PAT duty.  But I wouldn't do it for all touchdowns.  That'd be overkill.  I'd rather see the kicking done by someone who was in the game.

Making the scoring player kick PATs would add a new element to player evaluation and game strategy.  If you have two tailbacks and one is the much better placekicker, you may give him the ball on the goal line.

 

 

bjk

May 20th, 2015 at 1:18 AM ^

Why not go all Aztec, and feed the heart of everyone on the team that misses the extra point to the other team?

This may require rules changes that go outside the NFL.

MayOhioEatTurds

May 19th, 2015 at 7:41 PM ^

It will make so many more games turn on the foot of a place kicker.  So many more. 

The contrived kicking game--the extra points--is not my favorite part of football.  The strategy and tradeoff of field goals are great parts of the game, but I don't want so many more games to be decided based solely on the quality of teams' place kickers. 

I'd much rather see risk a point to go for two, or a rugby type rule (TD scorer kicks the extra point), most anything but this. 

UMGoRoss

May 19th, 2015 at 9:20 PM ^

In rugby, the person who scores doesn't have to kick the extra point. However, you have to kick it parallel to where you scored the try, so if you scored right next to touch line (aka sideline), it creates some really sharp angled kicks.



I'd love to see that, but it's harder in football given the fact that you have offensive lineman extended on both sides of the center.

Yostbound and Down

May 19th, 2015 at 9:26 PM ^

I love the conversion in rugby, but you also have a rugby ball vs a football, where the kicking surface is seemingly worse (not sure about the K-balls). That would be kinda fun though if they just did away with the lines and let the kicker kick from a tee... it would make an accurate kickoff specialist extremely valuable since a TD scored in the corner is going to take at least a 40 yarder to get a decent angle, just like rugby.

Farnn

May 19th, 2015 at 7:23 PM ^

Stupid rule change that just adds complexity because they want more viewership for the commercials between TDs and the following possession.  Should have just made a TD 7 points with the option to risk 1 for a shot at 2.

Why does it seem when ever something needs to be changed, sports leagues never seem to make the right changes to fix the issue.  

gwkrlghl

May 19th, 2015 at 8:11 PM ^

but the games roots also found forward passing to be an abomination

The development of pro kickers has made extra points (even from the 15) to be essentially meaningless. A smart league tweaks the rules to adapt ime. Not sure this is a slam dunk, but it's better than pretending like there's nothing to see here

MichiganMAN47

May 19th, 2015 at 7:26 PM ^

So essentially they are making it about a 32 (15+10+7) yard kick for the extra point . That is not a freebie by any means. There will be some misses. 

East German Judge

May 19th, 2015 at 7:39 PM ^

Actually they are still pretty accurate. 

PATs last year were sucessfully made 99.3% of the time, while FGs from the 20 - 29 yard line were made 98.3% of the time, while those from 30 - 39 yard line were made 88.3% of the time - unfortunately I did not find NFL data that was broken down more. 

Using very crude extrapolation, a 32 yard field goal/extra point should be successful about ~90% of the time. 

MGoBlog math majors - and we know you are out there - can probably come up with some more finite analysis.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

May 19th, 2015 at 11:06 PM ^

The stat I saw said about 95% of FGs from that distance are made.

I happen to really like this, by the way.  There were 8 missed PATs last year.  A 95% conversion rate would mean 62 missed PATs, almost eight times as many.  Assuming it only happens once per game, that would mean about a quarter of NFL games see a missed PAT.  That's very significant.  It could alter a lot of strategy.  A 21-17 game is coached very differently from a 20-17 game.  I think the 95% rate is just about the sweet spot where it'll still be just automatic enough that 7 points is a safe assumption, but it's still worth watching to find out.

MayOhioEatTurds

May 19th, 2015 at 7:37 PM ^

Precisely.  What this rule change does--unfortunately, in my opinion--is make place kickers far, FAR more valuable. 

Many more games will be won or lost based on the foot of one man. 

I'm not a fan. 

Risk one to go for two, or make the TD scorer kick it--but don't move the extra point line back.  That just places so many more game results on the quality of your place kicker. 

trustBlue

May 20th, 2015 at 3:58 AM ^

"Many more games will be won or lost based on the foot of one man. "

I think that's the point.  Right now PAT are pratically automatic points (~99%).  At that rate, you might as well just award the extra point and not waste the time of lining up to kick.  

Moving it back to where you get ~ 90% completion means that you will see PAT misses more, which makes it an actual competitve part of the game rather than something that exists just for show.

Evil Empire

May 20th, 2015 at 9:53 AM ^

I belonged to a co-ed student group all four years I was at UM.  We had a pretty decent flag football team, and took full advantage of the co-rec rules.  During playoff action we scored a late TD but failed on the PAT and time ran out with the other team ahead by two.  We hung around, dejected, talking about basketball season while our opponents celebrated.  Thinking about the co-rec scoring rules for basketball made me think of the rules for football.  Our final touchdown had been scored by a female player.  The refs had scored it as six points instead of the nine (I think) that the rules specified.  My roommate and I raced to the Mitchell Field office and barked out our case for the win.  The ref for our game blinked and said "shit, you're right."  We ran back and celebrated with our team while the other team wondered what the heck was going on.  Then I did this: *

 

 

* not really

LSAClassOf2000

May 19th, 2015 at 8:10 PM ^

"What did the NFL really accomplish?" said kicker Jay Feeley, a 14-year NFL veteran, via Twitter. "It's still nearly automatic (90%vs 99%) but greater risk of injury to Oline."

I kind of wonder this from a technical standpoint myself.  I could be wrong, but I don't know how much drama - if any - they've added to this aspect of the game. I supposed I could be totally wrong and this makes the PAT way more entertaining, but on the surface, it does not seem so. 

omg lasers pew pew

May 19th, 2015 at 8:43 PM ^

Assuming the stats from the article hold true, 92.8% of 33 yard field goals completed and 47.5% of 2 point conversions completed, we can get the estimated values of...

1pt conversion: .928 points

2pt conversion: .95 points

Mathmatically speaking, it makes more sense to go for 2 point conversions. If the league all goes for 2 point conversions on all their plays then 14-14 games could potentially be 12-16 games. That adds a lot of drama.

Of course the percentages could change when lining kicks up dead center every time, or if a team puts a lot of practice into 2 point conversions.