On a day when NFL placekickers missed 12 extra-point attempts, it became clear the league should enact a rule change that would spice up the game and address declining TV ratings.
The dozen missed extra points on Sunday — an NFL record for a single day — can be traced to the league’s decision before the 2015 season to move back the kicks 13 yards to the 15-yard line.
The NFL didn’t go far enough.
It’s time to tack on another 10 yards to the kicks, which would become 43-yarders, and keep the two-point conversion at the 2-yard line. Or better yet, narrow the goalposts and make kickers thread the needle.
Either way, it's time to force coaches to think longer and harder about keeping the kicker on the sideline and using the two-point conversion.
On Sunday, some of the balls kicked on extra-point attempts caromed off the uprights, others sailed wide of the goalposts and others got blocked. And you could almost hear the TV ratings drop from the 12 games Sunday when citing these numbers: Teams attempted 56 extra points and only four two-point conversions.
That’s 56 servings of vanilla and only four scoops of Rocky Road.
Jan Stenerud, the only kicker inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, said the league’s current kickers are the best he’s ever seen.
“I was starting to make a lot of 50-yard field goals 50 years ago and that was a big deal,’’ Stenerud, who won a Super Bowl ring in 1969 with the Kansas City Chiefs, said. “Now it’s big deal, darn near, if you miss from 50.’’
Since the NFL moved extra-point kicks to the 15-yard line last season teams have 93.9% conversion rate. On Sunday, bad weather contributed to most of the 12 misses, and yet the kickers still converted on 79% of attempts.
There have been 161 two-point conversion attempts over the past two seasons – 94 in 2015 and 67 this season. Teams have converted on 53.7% of their two-point conversion attempts this year after scoring on 45 of 94 (47.9%) last season.
But Mother Nature lacks the authority to do before 2017 what only the NFL’s rule committee can: challenge those kickers up, again.
