The longer extra point may be here to stay, at least until 24 owners decide to get rid of it.
The rule putting the one-point try at the 15 yard line, adopted on a one-year basis in 2015, could become permanent in 2016. Packers CEO Mark Murphy thinks it will.
“Last year’s change was only for one year, so the rule will be voted on again this year,” Murphy said in a monthly mailbag column at the team’s official website. “I anticipate that it will become permanent.”
To become permanent, the rule once again will require 24 votes, which means that it will take only nine votes to end it. But there’s currently no buzz suggesting that at least nine teams want to abandon an adjustment the dropped the one-point conversion rate from 99.4 percent to 94 percent. That makes the play more exciting -- especially since it also creates an inducement to go for two.
“I was a little surprised that more teams did not go for two points with the new rule,” Murphy writes.
The Packers tried it six times last year, on 42 touchdowns. They were second in the league, behind only the Steelers, who went for two 11 times.
Some may view Murphy’s remark as a passive-aggressive lamentation of coach Mike McCarthy’s decision not to go for two after a pair of Hail Marys in Arizona put the Packers one point behind the Cardinals with no time left in a divisional-round classic. The Packers instead played it safe, the Cardinals won the toss (twice), and they drove the ball right down the field for the winning touchdown.