A few weeks ago, the NFL owners approved an extra-point rule change that will result in kicks taking place from the 15-yard-line and Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis told Jim Rome Tuesday on his radio show that he believes the AFC North division teams will be impacted the most by it.
“I think our division is going to be affected by it more than any other in football,” Lewis told The Jim Rome Show. “Because all four teams are outside, we are all going to get bad weather at some point in the season, and I do think it’s going to play a big part.”
While Lewis does like some aspects of the extra-point rule change, such as the defense being able to score on two-point conversion tries, he doesn’t see moving back the kick tries as a minor change.
“I think moving the ball back, kicking the ball from the 15 yard line, which is virtually a 33-yard kick, you’re going to see quite a few missed PATs, more than people understand, Lewis told Rome.
We’ve already heard that Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin is paying more attention to two-point conversions so far during the team’s OTA practices because of the new extra-point rule and it sounds like Lewis is following suit.
“As coaches, we’re going to have to spend more time during training camp, during the week on both the offensive part of two point conversions and the defensive parts of two point conversions,” said Lewis.
While the weather might not play a huge role in the Steelers first ten games of the 2015 season, their final six games following their Week 11 bye will all be played outdoors with two of them taking place at Heinz Field and three others being played on the road against division opponents.
Like Lewis, I have feeling we’ll be seeing a few missed extra-points later on in the season and it will be interesting to see if indeed the AFC North teams are the ones that wind up being most affected by the rule change.
At the very least, those final four Steelers games against the Bengals, Denver Broncos, Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns might just include several two-point attempts, depending on the weather.
