NFL eyeing proposal to abolish extra points

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

NFL eyeing proposal to abolish extra points
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By Marc Sessler
Around the League Writer
Published: Jan. 20, 2014 at 04:53 p.m.
Is the extra point about to go the way of the dinosaur?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told NFL Network's Rich Eisen on Monday that the league's Competition Committee might eventually abolish the time-tested point after touchdown in favor of a brand-new scoring system.

"The extra point is almost automatic," Goodell said. "I believe we had five missed extra points this year out of 1,200 some odd. So it's a very small fraction of the play, and you want to add excitement with every play.

"There's one proposal in particular that I've heard about. It's automatic that you get seven points when you score a touchdown, but you could potentially go for an eighth point, either by running or passing the ball, so if you fail, you go back to six."

Extra points have become an afterthought. Unless you're up against Lawrence Taylor in Tecmo Bowl, there's virtually zero drama attached to the point after. Taylor's old coach Bill Belichick has often opined about about how unnecessary the extra point feels.

Goodell said "some issues" stand in the way of a change, asking: "Is that going to discourage people from going for two?"

We doubt it. Teams inclined to go for the deuce will continue to do so in situations that call for an eight-point score -- with the same potential consequences. Traditionalists might disagree, but this is a good idea long overdue.

Well, unless you're a kicker.

Goodell's entire interview will air Monday night at 8 p.m. ET on NFL Network's "Total Access."

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

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.

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 Its an idiotic ritual that is now outdated.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.

[Amnorix]

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.

[alnorth]

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.

[Jimmya]

Make it longer.

[BlackHelicopters]

Originally Posted by Jimmya

Make it longer.

TWSS

[TheUte]

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.

[mikey23545]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

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.

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.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Jimmya

Make it longer.

Well, okay.

NnnnFffffLllll eyyyyyyeing prooooopoooooosal tooooooooo abolishhhhhhhhhh exxxxxxxtra pooooooooooints.

[Rain Man]

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]

[BlackHelicopters]

Ban extra points.

[bowener]

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.

[BlackHelicopters]

Originally Posted by bowener

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.

[cosmo20002]

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

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by bowener

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.

Shit, beat me by a few minutes.

[scho63]

Abolish Roger Goodell-problem solved