extra, extra

What would happen to extra points if the NFL decided to spot the ball at the 25-yard line instead of the two? While the aim of it would be to lower the odds of earning the extra point and making it more attractive to try for two points from the two-yard line, it was worth looking at the numbers to see how efficiencies would change.

Charting extra-point rates over the last 11 years (since the league went to 32 teams), there has never been a season with more than 20 missed extra points. That’s slightly more than one per week. Even in 1945, kickers made 90.9% of their 252 extra-point attempts.

Charting the attempts and misses on field goals from between 40 and 46 yards (when the ball is spotted between the 22 and 28) gives us an idea of the success rate for similarly long extra points.

If the NFL did nothing other than change the spot of the ball to the 25-yard line for extra points, you could be expected to see the number of missed points approach one a game on average. The second-last column below is the number of additional missed extra points if you apply the field-goal percentage to the total number of extra points kicked that season. The final column divides the net misses by the number of games played in an NFL season.

Kickers hovered around 75-80% for a decade, yet they made a leap forward to an 86.4% success rate between 40 and 46 yards last season. Once they approach perfection from there, the NFL might as well just scrap the extra point altogether.