I like that the NFL often makes rule changes.
It’s one of the many reasons the NFL’s popularity plays to a galaxy, while baseball, basketball and hockey exist as planets orbiting the NFL galaxy.
The NFL spots a problem within its game and is not afraid to come up with a rule to make it better. However, there is a major flaw within the league’s desire to add suspense to its extra-point system: There will be too many times when a team deserving of victory will instead lose because of a missed extra point.
And this will damage the integrity of the game.
The NFL doesn’t like its current extra-point system because the kick from 20 yards away is too automatic. This is true. If NFL quarterbacks stood at the 10-yard line and threw the ball through the uprights, they couldn’t be any more accurate than the 99.6 percent conversion rate long snappers, holders and kickers have compiled with their exercise.
I have no problem with efficiency that approaches perfection, but if the NFL wants to spice up a scoring play, even if it’s a one- or two-point scoring play, fine.
The point-after-touchdown proposal that seems headed for ratification when owners meet again in May would have the ball moved from the 2-yard line to the 1½-yard line if a coach wants to go for two.
I like that idea. I said many times during the Tebow year of 2011 that the Broncos should go for two every time. Even the most scathing of Tebow bashers would admit he was all but unstoppable with the jump pass-run option near the goal line.
Even if the Broncos converted only 3-of-4 two-point conversions, that’s six points, where going 4-of-4 on extra-point kicks is four points.
Unfortunately, coaches don’t like to go for two because they prefer to keep those second-guess decisions to a minimum.
So the league has to prod them by making a rule change.
I’m also all for engaging the defense on the extra point by giving them a two-point carrot. One of the most exhilarating sports plays I’ve witnessed was linebacker Greg Biekert’s two-point runback of a blocked extra point that gave Colorado a 19-19 tie with Nebraska in a 1991 game at frigid Folsom Field.
I can still hear CU public-relations boss Dave Plati screaming at the media for breaking the no-cheering-in-the-press-box rule. It wasn’t that we were cheering, Dave. It’s just that when 150 or so media guys utter “Are you freakin’ kidding me!” in unison, at a time when “freakin'” was not yet established as a presentable substitute, it can sound like cheering.
What I abhor about the hot, new extra-point proposal is the option to collect one point by kicking from 33 yards away instead of 20. I don’t care what the statistics say about how good kickers are from 33 yards. If a team scores two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter to close to within 28-27, that extra point kick from 33 yards becomes missable.
I don’t mind when a kicker such as Matt Prater wins a game with a 59-yard field goal. But to lose because the kicker misses the extra point?
Then that becomes a bad rule.
My personal preference is to keep the extra point as is. But if the league insists a rule change is necessary, then I’m with Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll: Eliminate the kick option and have teams go for two after every touchdown.
The NFL game is too good to lose on a missed extra point.
Mike Klis: mklis@denverpost.com or
