First, they abolished defense, now they are going for X-pts.

Check this out, "the Playoff Bowl", a kind of sort/of precursor to the Pro Bowl:


Really, though, the whole thing seems kind of ridiculous. It'd never fly now. In fact, it barely did then. After his Green Bay Packers beat the Cleveland Browns in the 1963 game, Vince Lombardi called it "the Shit Bowl. A loser's game for losers. Because that's all second place is."

Awesome, Vince, but technically it was for third place.

http://www.bloguin.com/thisgivensund...e-a-thing.html

Go for 2.

It wouldn' tbe that surprising if they bring it back. They are always looking to add more games to the season, more teams to the playoffs, etc. They have talked about dumping the pro bowl for years, too. Actually, that's what most of the pro-bowl coverage is, a bunch of debate every year about whether they should keep it.

So I wouldn't be surprised if they bring back a runner-up game, either replacing or in addition to the pro bowl.

FGs and extra points are for quitters.

Wouldn't have a problem doing away with it. Just make it automatic.

Same as with an Intentional walk in MLB, just say call for the IBOB and move on.

This is an easy way to boost scoring and keep current add time.

They will cut to commercial before going for "one"


Yay, yet another benefit for elite QB's.

Though I don't conceptually like the idea of getting a point without having to do anything to get it, I agree that the XP is a useless play these days. I'd be fine with getting rid of it as described, though I'd be more in favor of altering the play itself to make it more interesting (moving it back to 30 yards or something)?

Except NBA free throw % probably averages around 70% with some in the 50s. Extra point % is over 99%

There is no way in hell they are ever, ever doing that.

Tony Romo approves this message

If they just make the TD 7 points there's not giving anything that they didn't earn, it's just seven points. And I think it's important to keep a TD at seven to make sure a TD is worth more than two FGs.

That being said, and to sound a little bi-polar, wouldn't it be interesting to make FGs longer than 50 yards worth 4 points? Make it and get more points, miss it and setup the other team with awesome field position.

And while we're changing rules, I'd love to make catching the ball on fair catches mandatory. If not caught, it's a fumble. So get out of the way and let the D pin you back.

Sorry, getting ahead of myself...

ROFLROFLROFLROFLROFL

Rep!

I don't like the idea of moving the XP back to make it more interesting. I'd rather them just get rid of it. I don't wanna make kickers a bigger part of the game.

If nothing else, he does a great job of creating hype around his product over stuff that shouldn't even be considered news. I wonder how many of these "proposals" are floating around at any given time.

I'm down with just leaving the game alone. The XP doesn't bother me at all. There's always still that rare chance that it's blocked or missed.

Another option under consideration is to make the extra point subject to public voting. You text to 85774 for yes, or to 35432 for no. It costs 50 cents to vote. It would produce a lot of revenue and encourage fan participation.

This. Why not move it back to the 25 and allow the defense to pick which hash mark to put it on? Better than Goddell's idea.

I don't want games to be decided by the ****ing point after.

How about dunking the ball over the crossbar as the extra point? If you score, you have to put the ball over the crossbar before being tackled or having it rejected.

Those 5 games were probably not impacted because games aren't decided by 1 point very often, and the fact that the PAT was missed usually doesn't even impact decisions later in the game.

You are already at 99.6% chance of making it, the chance that you either make it or a miss doesn't impact a game is probably 99.9%.

The PAT is stupid, it should be done away with, and I'm surprised at how many people are defending the PAT. A few of the pro-PAT posts are exceptionally stupid.

I also disagree with the argument that the PAT should be made more difficult, just get rid of the damned thing. If you are already willing to concede that the PAT as-is is a worthless thing that should be reformed or eliminated, then before you describe your new and improved PAT, you need to first explain why we should keep the PAT. "Because we've always done it" isn't a good enough reason, we don't play football to kick extra points, we play to score touchdowns.

If we didn't have the PAT and a TD was just worth 7 points, there is not a chance in hell that we'd think reducing it to 6 and introducing a PAT would be a good idea, even if it was a PAT that could be missed sometimes.

I really have no strong feeling on this at all. Of course it does sort of take even more of the "foot" out of "foot"ball.

You're probably right, but then we'd have zero percent chance of finishes like this!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kTGco82JKHo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

2002 - Trey Junken botched a snap for the Giants, leading to a loss in the Wildcard
2003 - Carney misses on the play you referenced
2006 - Shayne Graham misses a go-ahead field goal try that would have clinched Cincy into the playoffs
2007 - Tony Romo botches a snap on what was basically a PAT (a 19 yard attempt) leading to a playoff loss

Lots of exciting endings we'd miss out on. And while we pass these off as boring, I certainly don't think PATs are boring when a team scores a game-winning TD in the playoffs and the last PAT will either tie or seal the deal. Are people really going to say they don't hold their breath a little?

Yes.

If a team down by 6 scores a TD with 0:00 left on the clock, I'm switching the channel because I have a 99.9% chance of knowing who just won the game.

I am sure that if you're watching a game where you are rooting for a team in a playoff/play-in/super bowl game that you change the channel with 0 seconds to go, and one more play that needs to be run. Good point.

The reason people are defending the PAT is because you are taking a football play away, and the only reason you're doing that... it's not because it makes the game more fair. It's not to keep players safer. It's because apparently running 8-10 more plays in a game is apparently too much to handle, because we were all apparently complaining that the game was too long. Nevermind that nobody ONCE on this board complained about extra points until Goodell even brought it up.

That's the problem.

OK, you named 4 plays out of probably 15,000 EP kicks. And two of those you listed for some reason aren't even extra point attempts.

My wife and kids have asked me to explain why the extra point. I could only come up with that is was a gift point for scoring a TD that you had to earn, and you have to kick the ball sometime for the sport to be called football.

NOOOOOOO!!!

LMAO

Shayne Graham's was an extra point. That's my bad. So 3 out of 4 examples I gave were PATs. Romo's botched snap... that was basically a PAT.

Let me ask you this. How many NFL playoff/super bowl games in a season have the last play in regulation come down to an extra point that ties or wins the game? Or a chip shot field goal within 20 yards? How about "play-in" regular season games?

Probably 2 or 3 per year. So if this kind of thing has happened about 25 times the last 11 years. Let's even be generous and say "50 times." If a play was botched 4 times, that's either 8% or 16% of the time. That is NOT insignificant.

Yeah, that's a classic. That miss actually eliminated the Saints from playoff contention that year.

Removing extra points makes sense. It's a pointless play and getting rid of it helps the pacing of the game a bit.

Its not a football play. Its an idiotic ritual that is now outdated.

Any event which has a 99.6% chance of succeeding can no longer be considered a play, it is boring, uneventful, and pointless. The announcers do not even waste any time describing the extra point unless the super mega ultra-rare disaster happens. They yammer on about the touchdown, pause a moment to say the PAT was good, then continue talking about the play that ACTUALLY matters.

Just because we have had a few momentous events occur due to the PAT does not justify its existence. We are literally wasting hours of time per interesting event. Lets say a PAT takes an extra 30 seconds of time from lining things up, to kicking, to getting off the field. You have to watch 2 freaking hours of boring uneventful PAT's to see a missed one, and even then it often doesn't impact the game. That is too high a price to pay for the remote chance of it not being a total waste of time. This dumb ritual that people only defend because we've always done it that way before, is a waste of the players time, it is a waste of the teams time, and it is a waste of the fans time.

100% agree with Alnorth. The PAT is a boring waste of time. How many people go to the bathroom or head for the kitchen for that snack after the TD but BEFORE the PAT? Yeah, me too.

It's completely pointless. IMHO it should either be eliminated altogether, or changed in a way to make it a WORTHWHILE football play. Peter King had an interesting option. Move the PAT back to some challenging (but not too terrible) distance for 1 point OR go for 2 from the current LOS after a TD.

But yeah, picking the PAT. The single stupidest play in sports that I can think of.

To me, the PAT is similar to asking a player to run a 40-yard dash in 7 seconds after a touchdown on a wet muddy strip of turf to get the extra point. Even in domes, we could have a strip of wet muddy turf off the side of the field for the point after. You'll probably make it, but there's always a chance you slip and crash to the ground, probably a bigger chance than missing an extra point. Teams would probably have sure-footed fast specialists practicing the 1-point run, and we'd definitely have to watch it.

But it would be stupid. Just about as stupid, artificial, and contrived as the PAT. The only reason we don't think the PAT is stupid is because we've grown up with it.

Make it longer.

TWSS

It's maybe ok, but there are other things the need to be fixed first.

We all feel in love with football, when it included XP's as they are, of all the thing that can be done why worry about something that really isn't broken.

You're not getting it.

Some of the most self-centered posters on the board have said the extra point should be eliminated BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE IT.

Nuff said.

Well, okay.

NnnnFffffLllll eyyyyyyeing prooooopoooooosal tooooooooo abolishhhhhhhhhh exxxxxxxtra pooooooooooints.

If you believe wikipedia, the extra point was once worth more than a touchdown. You scored a touchdown to get the opportunity to kick an extra point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convers...iron_football)

The try/convert is among the oldest parts of the game of gridiron football and dates to its rugby roots. In its earliest days, scoring a touchdown was not the primary objective but a means of getting a free kick at the goal (hence why the name "try," more commonly associated with rugby today, is still used in American football rule books), and thus early scoring rubrics for the game gave more points to the subsequent kick than the actual advancement of the ball into the end zone. The related term "conversion" is still used in both rugby union and rugby league to refer to extra points scored by kicking the ball through the posts after a try has been scored.

By the start of the 20th century, touchdowns had become more important and the roles of touchdown and kick were reversed. By this time the point value for the after-touchdown kick had reduced to its current one-point value while the touchdown was now worth five. (This later increased to six points in American football in 1912 and in Canadian football in 1956.)[citation needed]

Ban extra points.

Narrow the goalposts by 3' on each side, making them 12'6" wide, and add another 10' at the top, and raise the bottom bar to 12' (which stops the stupid dunks). Have extra points be kicked from a hashmark of choice by the opposition. That would be a pretty extreme angle at 2 yards.

This would also make 60+ field goals much more difficult by raising the bar (literally). And I would like to add the extra 10' at the top to help take the error of human element out of the refs hands.

This all seems much more logical than doing away with the PAT.

Too logical. Will never happen.

Make the goal posts 10 feet wide.

That will also make more teams go for it on 4th down because FGs will be harder (except the Chiefs, who will punt more).

PROBLEM SOLVED

Shit, beat me by a few minutes.

Abolish Roger Goodell-problem solved

Remember when the goalposts were on the goal line? I don't, but I saw it on TV. Players kept cracking themselves on it so they moved it to the back of the end zone.

I wonder if there was a shit storm then about players being pussies and ruining the game by making FGs longer.

Why would that make a difference? Will the new commissioner not act as the owners want him to?

God - so much of this.

That SOB just HAS to mess with EVERYTHING.

The owners must really be shocked at everything he is doing to screw with the game. They are defenseless against Goodell, who apparently is the boss of the owners.

It sure didn't seem like as many things were being changed, or considered to be changed, under Paul T.

You probably just don't remember, and a lot of the rule stuff is related to concussions which didn't really emerge as the major issue it is now until after Paul T. Point is, NONE of this stuff--rule changes, adding teams to the playoffs, what days games are played-- is done without explicit approval from the owners, and they likely suggest a lot of it. He is carrying out their wishes.

We can only imagine the kind of stuff that is suggested behind the scenes. I'd be surprised if there weren't at least proposals for TV games every night of the week, adding a couple rounds to the playoffs, teams in Mexico and London, and who knows what else.

Not that I'm a Goodell fan or anything, I just think the blame should go to where it belongs.

They are neither shocked nor defenseless, they are simply money-whores who are paying him well to take the heat for moves that might somehow lead to more money. But I think you already knew all of that.

This is a really salient point. If the game currently existed with every team going for two after a touchdown nobody would argue for a boring single automatic point kick to be added.

Either way, kicking in general has become too good. Ryan Succop had the 28th best kicking accuracy this season. That put him 12% better at kicking FGs than Jan Steneruds career average.

Just in the last decade there has been a huge jump. This year Rob Bironas was the 20th most accurate FG kicker at 86.2%. In 2002, that would have placed him as the 5th most accurate. That includes the fact that there are far more 50+ yarders taken this season.

Kickers haven't missed a kick inside of 40 yards yet in the playoffs.

I don't really care about the PAT.

Also, I used to have a lot of anger towards Goodell.

After thinking about it, he's only doing what the owners want him to do.

LMAO Come on, man. You gotta be smarter than this.

So we could take the rugby rule and where you score is where you kick from. So a fade corner route would lead you being stuck kicking it from the sideline.

(I believe it is where the player is forced to put the ball down in the try in rugby area is where you kick from on the field)

Well, I was being sarcastic if that's what you mean. Goodell acts on behalf of the owners.

You, sarcastic??? No!!!!!!!!!!

The owners are trying to maximize revenue any way possible. If eliminating the extra point is profitable, they will find a way to make it happen.

Or we can just get rid of the stupid PAT.

There is no logical reason for the PAT to even exist, other than "we always had it".

make it to where the QB hands the ball off to the kicker, and he must run it in the A gap.

Awe, shit. LOL

There is no logical reason to get rid of it other than "it saves time," even though nobody was ever complaining about games being too long in the first place.

If Goodell had his way he would do away with running the football and shorten the field by 40 yards so there is non stop scoring.

This is an interesting idea.

I'd also love to see the NFL widen the hash marks like in college.