I’ve never thought about it but is the distance from the ball to the holder based on a rule or just convention?
Convention – that is, based on what’s practiced and practical for the kicking team. They can hold the ball wherever they want.
That link says the Brown’s Tulpa had three of them that season so I’d guess there were a bit more than two.
Heh. Well, we can’t all be Tom Tupa.
According to the SNF announcers there were 4 misses this week. If that rate holds, I say the NFL will have accomplished their goal. Not automatic, adds some drama, and could create a lot more excuses to go for 2 or “walk off” victories due to more 5 and 6 point differentials.
I think it’s clunky and gimmicky that the extra point is spotted either at the 2 if you decide to go for 2, or the 15 if you decide to kick.
I would have changed it by spotting the ball at the 1. Tempt the scoring team into going for 2 with the carrot, not the stick.
I loved Tom Tupa. How can you not love your punter being your Emergency QB, and then actually coming into the game and playing QB? So good.
3 misses and 1 block out of 65 PAT attempts is about 94% success rate.
Considering the rarity of teams going for it on 4th and 1, I’m not sure that would have the desired effect. I think coaches would still only go for 2 when the “chart” says they should and then only in the 4th quarter due to the “try not to get blamed” factor.
I’ll stand by my post from a previous discussion about moving the PAT, it’s bloody stupid that does nothing to add excitement to the game.
There were several better options:
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Make the PAT attempt from the 1-yard line. While this would barely change the kick percentage, it boosts the odds for making the two point conversion to better than 50%. (According to Sports Illustrated, the success rate for running the ball in from the 1 is about 54% and passing about 49%.)
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The PAT kick should be taken by the player that scored the touchdown.
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Widen the hashmarks and narrow the goalposts. This opens up the game all the way around and makes all field goals much more difficult.
bad idea
does anyone actually want to see a good game with a great last minute TD drive decided by a missed PAT (I don’t)
I disagree. More room, sure, but it’s also a lot farther to go. This is why I think it’s a silly rule change because the consistency between 1-pt and 2-pt conversions is lost. Rather than making 1-pt harder by moving it back, they should be trying to improve the parity between 1-pt and 2-pt conversions. If they move it forward to the 1 yard line, it can actually potentially make the 1-pt kick a little harder because of the angle and make the 2-pt a little easier. If the 2-pt can get closer to 50% or even slightly above it, it could make things more interesting.
Also, I don’t think this idea of making the PAT matter is important. As it is, I still don’t see many of the players trying much harder than they did before, and for viewers, if I was waiting until the end of the drive to get a drink or go to the bathroom, I’m still not going to wait for the PAT now. I will wait for it IF it’s late in the game and it matters but, again, that’s something I would have done before anyway.
If anything, I could see this change ultimately being more frustrating to a lot of people. Imagine, you see a late drive, the team has an exciting 2-min drill touchdown drive, and they just need the PAT to win or push it into overtime. And… nope, now it’s a miss and that win now means overtime, but they’re deflated, or that tie to go into overtime that could have been exciting just leaves the game ending with a bitter note. It’s one thing if a team is held back because of good defense or just runs out of time, its another thing if everyone thinks they made it and they don’t.
And really, if it is that bad, that they feel the kicking game is too reliable, make other changes, like those someone else mentioned of narrowing the uprights, raising the crossbar, moving the goal posts even just a couple yards farther back (though I think raising the bar would have more or less the same effect), and/or widening the hashes. It seems to me that those sorts of changes would be an appropriate response to improved kicker performance similar to how in baseball they’ve raised or lowered the pitcher’s mound to tweak pitcher performance.
Moving back the kick is a stupid half-measure. One more chance for players to get injured on a meaningless play.
To make the game better, just make the kick a gimme: teams can take one automatic extra point without having to do anything, or try for two. Keeps the interesting strategic choices without having to run nearly meaningless plays (or, nearly as bad, have a team lose because the 0.8% chance came up against them).
The problem with that, from the owner’s point of view, is that it eliminates one commercial break. Now, making a better game is all well and good, but let’s not lose sight of what this is really all about. Thus the stupid change they have now.
they don’t have commercial breaks in between the touchdown and extra point
I like the new rule. There definitely seemed to be a few more early-game two point attempts this weekend, and the kicking spot is far enough back to make the extra point slightly interesting.
Scenario: The NFL buys all the old Jeopardy shows and slices up them up into 1 answer/question segments.
The scoring team gets to choose a 1/2/3/4/5 hundred dollar value answer, which is then selected by a random number generator. Answering with the correct question gives the team the corresponding point(s); an incorrect response results in the loss of the corresponding point(s).
For fun, the scored-on team selects which player from the scoring team has to play (the majority of the players went to college, right?).
The scoring team can decline the challenge and keep the 6 points from the touchdown.
Suspenseful and educational!
(if Jeopardy won’t sell the rights, maybe Wheel of Fortune will)
The old way didn’t offer the possibility of any two points after touchdown. Change for the sake of change is stupid.
Yup. It had traditionally been seven yards, which is far enough that the kicker can get the ball sufficiently high by the time it reaches the line of scrimmage that it’s fairly unlikely to be blocked, but not so far that the long snapper can’t accurately get the snap to the holder.
Over the past 10-15 years, it’s become standard for most teams to place the ball eight yards behind the line of scrimmage for longer field goals (i.e., longer than about 45 yards). The reasoning here is that the kicker will attempt to hit the ball a little lower, trading height for distance, and that extra yard gives him a little more space to get the ball over the defense.
That’s why it would (sometimes) be successful. Few defenses would expect it.
Nice hipster cynicism, but misplaced. The commercial breaks you’re talking about don’t exist.
Now, the commercial breaks that come before and after each kickoff exist and are truly cause for punching network executives in the face.