NFL kickers apparently have become too good for the good of the league. So the league may push back.
To 42 yards.
According to NFL.com, the league's competition committee is engaged in preliminary discussions about moving the extra point back to the 25-yard line to force kickers into converting a tougher attempt from 43 yards out.
Discussion about extra points began in January because of the success rate at which extra points were successful during 2013 - a 99.6 percent rate, NFL.com reported. Kickers combined to missed five extra points out of 1,267 attempts. Because of the near automatic success, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell flirted with the idea of eliminating extra points all together.
Moving PAT attempts back to the 25 would decrease the rate of success to about 83 percent - the success rate at which kickers converted field goals from 40-49 yards last season.
"There is no consensus yet," one member of the committee told NFL Media's Judy Battista. "We could experiment in preseason, but we are not there yet."
Improved conditions in NFL stadiums, rules changes to protect the snapper and more practice time has led to greater kicking accuracy, Battista reported.
She indicated that in 2013, 67.13 percent of all field-goal attempts were successful, a nearly 20 percent jump from 10 years ago when kickers converted 48.38 percent of their 50-yard attempts.
Jan Stenerud, the only player in the Hall of Fame solely on the strength of his placekicking, converted 96.5 percent of his extra points and 66.8 percent of his field goals all time.
By comparison, the top 10 kickers in the league in 2013 all converted 90 percent of their field goal attempts.
"If you're not a 90 percent field goal kicker under these circumstances, I'm not sure I want you," said Mike Westhoff, who recently retired after a long career as the special teams coach for the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets.
With the extra point moved back, the two-point conversion - with its 50-percent success rate - becomes a more viable option for coaches.
© Copyright 2024 Sports World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.