Josh Brown, the New York Giants kicker in his 13th year in the NFL, said he understood why the league moved the extra-point attempt this season so that the kick was 33 yards from the goal posts instead of 20 yards.
“Because the old extra-point kick was like a basketball layup with no one guarding you,” Brown said. “Who’s going to watch that? That’s when everyone got up and went to the bathroom.”
Since 2000, the success rate of extra-point attempts from the 2-yard line had been 99 percent every season except one, when it was 98 percent.
But this season, from the 15-yard line, through Sunday, NFL kickers have already missed 17 extra-point attempts, which is five more than were missed in the 17-week schedule last year.
“And the misses are only going to continue,” said Brown, who had made 392 of 394 extra-point attempts in his career entering the weekend. “Wait until the weather gets bad.”
It may not seem highly consequential that kickers are converting only 94.3 percent of extra-point tries, and no game has been lost on a failed kick, but it has still influenced outcomes. The prospect of a failed kick has also changed the decisions and preparations of NFL coaches.
But mostly it has transformed what was a boring, automatic play into something more deliberative and variable.
“This is exactly what the league was hoping for — to change a ceremonial play into a competitive play,” said John Mara, the Giants co-owner who is on the NFL’s competition committee, which recommended the rule change. “We didn’t want a guaranteed thing, and we figured that more teams would then go for two. So the rule change is achieving what it was intended to do.”
Mara added, laughing, “I say that until we miss an extra point that costs us.”
Not everyone is happy. After he had an extra point blocked during the opening week of season, Cincinnati Bengals kicker Mike Nugent criticized the new rule.
“It’s a rule that was changed to make players fail more, which I just don’t get,” Nugent told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “This is an offensive-driven league. Everyone wants to see points. To change a rule to make less points, it just confuses me. And I completely disagree with it.”
There are other observations and worries about the new rule.
New York Jets kicker Nick Folk has noticed that collisions on the line are much more fierce than they were for the old extra point, when players, aware of the 99 percent success rate, took it a little easier on each other. Now Folk is concerned for his teammates.
“I don’t know the numbers, but if you did a study, you’d probably find that there are more injuries on extra points this year than in years past,” Folk said. “For example, we go to Week 17, we’re playing Buffalo — D’Brickashaw Ferguson breaks his arm on a PAT. That usually wouldn’t happen before.”
He added: “You don’t really want to think like that. But at the same time, I really appreciate what those guys do every year for me. They sit there and have to take a beating for a second and a half to two seconds.”
The rule change is in effect only this season, as the NFL compiles data on the kicks, with the possibility of making them even harder next season or making the new lengths permanent.
Because of the more challenging kick, coaches have been increasingly tempted to try a 2-point conversion, which has remained at the 2-yard line. So far this season, NFL teams have already tried nearly half as many 2-point conversions as they did last season. And league officials and coaches said they expected 2-point tries to increase.
Two-point conversions come with risk. The defense can also score 2 points by intercepting a pass or scooping up a fumble on a 2-point attempt and returning it to the other end zone. Previously, the ball was dead after a failed try. There is now even a stand-alone, 1-point scoring play that would happen if a safety occurred on an extra-point try.
Buffalo coach Rex Ryan has considered all the possibilities, and seen many of them already.
“We’ve missed an extra point or two; we’ve gone for more 2-point plays than we would have normally,” Ryan said.
“It used to be on a 2-point play, you can fire the ball into anything, and if guys picked it, there were no repercussions,” Ryan said. “Now, you’ve got be mindful. You throw that thing into the flat, and the guy takes it to the house on you.”
The Jets’ offensive coordinator, Chan Gailey, said his staff devoted extra hours in the offseason to come up with a bevy of inventive 2-point plays.
“It’s a longer list than I’ve ever had before,” Gailey said.
The Jets also now have two assistant coaches in the press box during games who analyze the advantages of whether to go for 1 point or 2 points. Their findings are reported to coach Todd Bowles.
A 33-yarder is still an easy kick, but it requires more practice.
“I think most kickers could go out and kick a 20-yard field goal pretty cold, straight off the bench,” said Buffalo kicker Dan Carpenter, who missed an extra point in the second week of the season.
And with wind, rain or snow?
“Does it make it a little bit more difficult? Sure,” Atlanta kicker Matt Bryant said. “But I mean, the main thing of it is, though, it’s now part of the game. You just got to go out there and deal with it.”
