NFL kickers had a rough day on Sunday, with 12 missed extra points. And the league is now trending toward its worst season for extra point accuracy in four decades.
League-wide, extra points have been good just 92.4 percent of the time this season. That’s the lowest success rate since the 1979 season, when kickers made 91.3 percent of their extra point attempts.
Kickers steadily improved after that, getting so good at extra points that more than 99 percent of kicks were successful in every season from 2010 to 2014. That’s why, in 2015, the NFL decided to make extra points more difficult, moving them 13 yards back. Since then, the success rate has hovered between 93 percent and 95 percent.
Until Sunday, when that ugly day for kickers dropped the success rate below 93 percent on the season. Perhaps yesterday will prove to be nothing more than a blip. But for now, the extra point is less of a gimme than it’s been since the days when straight-ahead kickers wore single-bar facemasks.