Point-after kicks get a little harder
Owners vote to move attempts to 15-yard line
The most boring play in the NFL will get slightly more interesting.
League owners at the spring meetings approved multiple changes to the point-after attempt Tuesday: The extra point will be snapped from the 15-yard line instead of the 2, effectively making it a 33-yard try, and the defense will have the opportunity to score two points on a return. A two-point conversion will remain at the 2-yard line.
The proposal, submitted by the competition committee, passed with a 30-2 vote. The Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders voted against it.
The change is approved for only the 2015 season, but Houston Texans general manager Rick Smith, a member of the competition committee, said the expectation was that the change would stick long term.
“This isn’t an experiment. It’s a rule change,” Smith said. “We have given ourselves the ability to look at the statistics and make sure we are accomplishing the things we are trying to accomplish.”
And that is making the extra point a more competitive play after kickers converted 99.5% of those kicks in 2014. Dean Blandino, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, said kickers made 93 to 94% of attempts from 33 yards last season.
“The overall goal throughout the process was to make the play more challenging and a more skilled play than what it was,” Blandino said.
It could also mean more twopoint conversion attempts after only 59 such plays in 256 regularseason games last season.
Raiders’ fate:
Raiders owner Mark Davis used several minutes of his lunch break to greet about a dozen Oakland fans, several in full game-day garb, complete with silver and black face paint.
They were urging Davis not to move the franchise back to Los Angeles.
“Hey, listen,” Davis said, as he stepped into a scrum of fans, “you guys are the best. I’m trying all I can do to keep this team in Oakland, OK?”
But with the Raiders concurrently working with city and county officials about stadium plans in the eastern Bay Area in addition to a partnership with the San Diego Chargers to potentially build a shared stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, Davis and the fans are frustrated.
“I’m not trying to divide any fan base,” Davis said. “I’m trying to stay in Oakland. That’s our No. 1 thing. But we can’t do this forever.”
Davis said he expected an update from the city of Oakland and Alameda County by June 21 on a financing plan for a new stadium in the eastern Bay Area.
He admitted feeling jealousy when seeing fancy new stadiums elsewhere in the NFL and frustration that his subpar facilities make it more difficult to lure elite players to Oakland.
Still, moving to the southern Bay Area to share Levi’s Stadium with the San Francisco 49ers is not an option, nor is moving to St. Louis — should the Rams be the team that relocates to Los Angeles in 2016 — or selling the franchise.
Davis intends to remain the team’s controlling owner, he said, for the rest of his life.
It seems inevitable that at least one NFL team will relocate to Los Angeles after the upcoming regular season. It could be the Rams, with owner Stan Kroenke invested in a stadium project on land he purchased in Inglewood, Calif., or the Chargers and Raiders in Carson.
The Chargers and Raiders actually moved a step closer Tuesday to building a stadium in Carson after a complex land deal was finalized on a site that could become the home of a shared $1.7 billion venue.