Check out this article:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/goodell-suggests-ditching-pat-kick-205817090–nfl.html
I think awarding 7 points for a touchdown with the option to go for a 1 point run/pass conversion and 1 point taken away for failing is too gimmicky.
I hate the 1 point PAT. My solution would be to give the scoring team the option of a 1 point kick with the play starting on the 20 yard line or have a 2 point run/pass play from the 2 yard line.
Thoughts?
Why not just shrink the size of the goalposts? That way PATs and chip shot field goals wouldn’t be gimmies but it wouldn’t radically change the form of the game.
I don’t like the idea of taking points away on a touchdown. I believe there is a reason a touchdown is worth more than two field goals.
If the PAT is too boring why not just cut it out? A TD is 7 points and the offense gets a chance to make another from the 2 yard line.
This might end up with more injuries with both O and D playing another play per TD.
If the kicked PAT is too easy, make it a longer kick. Taking the “foot” out of football even more isn’t the way to go, imo.
Sounds like a “solution” in search of a problem to me. There’s nothing wrong with PATs the way they are now. Sure, most of the time, it’s a gimme…but when it gets missed or blocked, it can be a game changer. Leave well enough alone.
Yeah, I don’t really understand this either. Field goals inside the 15 yard line have probably pretty close to the same success rate as PAT. Should we just automatically give a team 3 points if they get to forth down inside a certain yard line?
Doesn’t Roger Goodell have something better to do?
I hate it. There’s something to be said for tradition–the game is fine as is. There’s no need to fix something that isn’t broken.
Sounds like a good idea to me actually because it forces more strategic choices, which is where football really shines as opposed to sports like basketball and soccer, which are much less strategic sports.
I also wouldn’t be opposed to changing the uprights widths or just making the PAT kicked from the 35 yard line or something.
I would like the game to have more important plays and more strategic choices, so I’d be in favor of all sorts of plans that remove extra points. Or at least to make more frequent situations in which going for two is preferred over the extra point.
At first I thought perhaps just simply losing the option for an extra point would be good - score 6 for a TD, and force a team to try for 2. That would create interesting situations where teams frequently gained or lost a conversion and had leads of 2 points over their opponents. But then I thought I don’t really like that change of the ratio between field goals and touchdowns - field goals should be worth less than half a TD, especially with kickers being so good now.
So then I thought perhaps award a TD as 7 and then give a chance from the 2 yard line to add one extra point on top of that. That creates more dramatic plays in the game, and adds some interesting late game scoring differentials that could lead to drama, but this lacks the immediate strategic choice I’m craving.
Kick the extra point from the 20, making it a 38 yard field goal. The 20 seems natural. Maybe 25, for a 43 yarder. Problem with this is that kickers are so good you might just be reducing a 99% chance to a 94% one, not terribly compelling. But it’d be closer to being a real decision, especially in adverse conditions, so better than the current situation.
Oddball off the wall solution that would be a fun novelty but would never actually make it in the rules. Make the scoring player kick the extra point from the place he scored the touchdown (meaning you could have odd corner kicks from near the sideline) - that would just be all sorts of fun.
I’m not at all swayed by appeals to tradition in terms of rules for games. “It’s always been this way” isn’t persuasive to me - and if you can change the point after rule to make the games have more interesting, meaningful, dramatic plays, or increase the strategic choices available to coaches, great.
Simplest solution:
Do not allow place kicks on the tries. All kicks must be drop kicked.
Even simpler, move PATs back 10 yards or whatever. There are bunch of things you can do if you don’t like the 99% completion rate. But yeah, in my opinion, it ain’t broke. How often do you see someone injured on a PAT? Probably less often than they are missed.
Sports are entertainment.
PATs are not entertaining.
Now that we have that resolved, I don’t like the idea of TD’s being worth 7 unless you decide to go for 2, then they’re worth 6. I say, kick the PAT from where the goal line was crossed. Adjust the point to ensure that there’s enough lateral space to run a play if the crossing was done at the sideline. If the Offense wants to run a 2 point conversion instead, they can go back to the appropriate hash mark.
Agreed.
Why, FoieGrasIsEvil, what ever do you mean?
I kind of like the suggestion that PATs have to be kicked by the player that scored the touchdown.
I like the suggestion to make it a drop-kick. Bring back Doug Flutie!
Get rid of the commercial break after kickoffs (or the one immediately before them) and we’ll call it even.
How about combining a couple ideas and a new twist.
Leave the PAT, but there are only 3 people on the field. The hiker, the kicker (who will do a drop kick), and a kick blocker.
Take away the roughing kicker penalty and let the blocker charge into the kicker as hard as they want (same tackling rules as versus a running back).
As for the hiker, the hike must occur where the ball crossed the plane for the touch down. If the kicker needs a better angle, he’d have to outrun the blocker and get the kick off from a more favorable position, without crossing the original line of scrimmage.
I like NFL Blitz rules. A touchdown is worth 6, you can choose to kick a point or go for 2. If you choose to kick a point, you just get the point without actually having to run the play. I know it is basically the same suggestion as the OP, but I prefer this wording/framing.
Also, why does the article pretend that this change will mean more teams will go for 2 with this change? it is still the exact same point math as before, so teams will still take 7 points most of the time.
Or, how about instead of a leather ball, we have it made of gazelle, and then instead of a kick blocker, we have a hungry, feral lion that gets released when the ball is snapped. The kicker than would really have incentive to kick the ball, but also have to do so in the face of a charging lion.
Add me to the “ain’t broke” team.