Evidently, the league really is dead set on making life more difficult for kickers. Following a groundswell of support over the course of the offseason for a long-proposed change to the standard procedure for extra points, it seems that the competition committee now has three solid proposals on the table that they will consider next week—all three of which move the line of scrimmage for the point after attempt back to the 15-yard line.
The New England Patriots’ proposal is the most straightforward, simply keeping everything as it has been other than the new line of scrimmage for the point after attempt, with two-point conversion attempts still being taken from the two-yard line.
The Patriots have long been proponents of this rule change, and have been proposing its implementation for a number of years. The league did experiment with moving the point after attempt back during the preseason last year.
The Philadelphia Eagles would like to see a more substantial change. In addition to moving the point after attempt back to the 15-yard line, they would also like to move the two-point conversion attempt up to the one-yard line. They also propose that the defending team will have the opportunity to score on a turnover during an extra point attempt.
Finally, the proposal coming from the competition committee blends the suggestions of the two proposals above, wherein the point after attempt would be moved back to the 15-yard line and the two-point conversion attempt would stay where it is, but the defending team would still have the opportunity to score.
Given that every proposal on the table has the point after attempt being moved back, following an offseason of momentum within league circles that appeared to be overwhelmingly in support of doing something, it seems likely that one of these proposals will indeed pass, and that the point after attempt will now be pushed back—one might argue prolonging the boredom by the time it takes the ball to travel 13 more yards.
I have personally been a proponent of moving the two-point attempt up to the one-yard line, which is a suggestion that Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has quietly supported in recent years, but I don’t favor pushing the extra point attempt back.
Part of the nature of the extra point is its nature as a given—which you will agree with when your team loses a game because of a missed attempt.
