Let the great long-distance extra point experiment begin.
In the NFL preseason.
Multiple media outlets reported Wednesday that the NFL has decided that extra-point attempts will be snapped from the 20-yard line, making extra points a 38-yard attempt. The catch? The moved extra-point will take place only during the first two weeks of the season.
"We'll look at it in the first two weeks of the preseason to see if things come up," St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher, a co-chair of the league's competition committee, told ESPN. "The committee has historically been very careful to make changes like that. I think it's a positive thing as far as trying it is concerned."
There was no indication whether the 38-yard PATs would be implemented this season if the NFL powers that be are satisfied with the results of the two-week experiment.
The NFL on Wednesday also voted to allow replay of fumbles, even when the play is blown dead by officials - which came to light during the NFC Championship Game when San Francisco 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman recovered a loose ball but suffered a major knee injury on the play and had the ball knocked out after he was down and suffered the injury.
Also, the game clock no longer will stop on a quarterback sack in the last two minutes of a half.
Two other rules were made involving goalposts. The first was to extend the goal posts from 30 to 35 feet, and the second was to call an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on players dunking a football.
The latter change was part of a point of emphasis by the NFL to curb player conduct on the field.
"In the past, taunting/sportsmanship was in the back of the book under points of emphasis. It is now a front-of-the-book issue." Fisher said, according to USA TODAY Sports. "We want to put it back in the back of the book."
ESPN added that officials will be told to throw flags for the use of slurs, including the N-word, as well as for taunting.
The NFL is responding to the NCAA's hopes that NFL players can serve as role models for college athletes, Fisher said.
"We have to bring the level of highest respect back to our game," Fisher said, according to ESPN. " ... We're going to clean the game up on the field between the players, the in-your-face taunting, those types of things, the language.
"If the college athlete sees something on the weekends the pro athletes are doing, most of the time they're going to do the same thing."
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