We’ve heard a variety of ideas about what to do regarding the extra point after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league was considering eliminating the one-point tries from the game entirely.
Many of those suggestions have come from kickers, including one from Jets kicker Nick Folk. Folk thinks the league should explore adding a pair of uprights nine feet apart -- the same distance as in arena football, although these would be within the existing uprights -- and require kickers to hit extra points between them rather than using the current 18'6" distance.
“It would make it harder,” Folk said, via Dom Cosentino of NJ.com. “That could be a new way to do it because I don’t know what the percentage would be. Even if it’s 90 percent, then it’s not as automatic and you’re still dealing with the elements that can affect the ball going through there.”
Folk, who said he likes to practice with the smaller uprights, also suggested changing the scoring for field goals by giving four points for ones through the smaller uprights and five points if you nailed one from beyond 50 yards through the narrow window. Adam Vinatieri had a similar idea about long field goals, one that’s a bit problematic because it awards more points for drives that stall a good distance from the end zone, but the extra point idea does attempt to address the fact that extra points have become all but automatic in recent years.
That’s what the league should be looking for in any proposed change to the extra point before making a call to abolish it altogether.