Good kickers get paid as much as running backs. Eventually, the very best kickers could make a lot more.
In a recent interview with the team’s official website, Giants co-owner John Mara reiterated the possibility that the goal posts will at some point become narrower.
“You see a lot of discussion about the extra point and what we’re going to do with that, and I think there’s a general feeling that we need to do something there,” Mara said. “The kickers have gotten so good, there’s some discussion about whether we should make the goal posts, the uprights, narrower at some point in the future. We’re not ready to do that just yet but you could see that at some point in the future if the accuracy continues to improve.”
Currently, the NFL’s goal posts are 18 feet, six inches wide. The Arena Football League uses a nine-foot split.
Concerns about the easy of converting kicks primarily has centered on the extra point, which will move back to the 15 during the 2014 preseason on an experimental basis. Mara suggested that, instead of making the extra point harder, the league could decide to make the two-point attempt more enticing.
“That’s not out of the realm of possibility for some point in the future,” Mara said regarding the possibility of moving the PAT from the two to the one. “I think that would be something worth looking at.”
Competition Committee chair Rich McKay said last month that the goal posts eventually could be made more narrow.
The ultimate question is whether the NFL wants to make the game safer by removing an irrelevant play or whether the NFL wants to make an irrelevant play more relevant. At a time when the NFL may have to give the NFLPA a concession to secure an agreement to expand the playoffs from 12 to 14 teams, maybe the players will ask for the extra point to be scuttled.
And maybe the NFL would agree.