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Jeff Fisher not in favor of changing extra point
By Nick Wagoner
http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-ra...f-fisher-not-in-favor-of-changing-extra-point
EARTH CITY, Mo. -- As a member of the NFL's competition committee, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher is often a go-to guy for media looking for answers about potential rule changes in the league.
That's always abundantly clear at the NFL scouting combine and this year was no different. Fisher was asked about a variety of things that might be under consideration for the committee this year, including the possibility of moving the extra point from being snapped from the 2-yard line to the 15.
The NFL experimented with that change in the 2014 preseason with the idea being to make a play that had become a foregone conclusion something with a little more pressure involved.
In the first two weeks of exhibition games, teams attempted 141 extra points with kickers missing eight times for a percentage of 94.3 percent from the new distance. During the regular season, kickers also missed eight extra points, though those misses came on 1,230 attempts for a conversion rate of 99.3 percent.
So while the preseason experiment offered a much smaller sample size, it did come with a bit more variance in terms of makes and misses. It's a variance that Fisher said in Indianapolis he's not OK with and he made a solid analogy to illustrate his argument.
"Personally I don't want to kick a 19-yard field goal to win a game, and then miss a 35-yard extra point in Green Bay when it's 20 degrees to lose a game," Fisher said. "So that's my position. I think it would be too drastic of a change, me personally."
Dean Blandino, the NFL's head of officiating, previously said he expected the extra point to change in the "near future." Those discussions figure to be ongoing but given the amount of concern around the league about things like the "completing the catch" rule and the matter of managing the inflation process of the balls, it's possible the extra point conversation could take a backseat.
By Nick Wagoner
http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-ra...f-fisher-not-in-favor-of-changing-extra-point
EARTH CITY, Mo. -- As a member of the NFL's competition committee, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher is often a go-to guy for media looking for answers about potential rule changes in the league.
That's always abundantly clear at the NFL scouting combine and this year was no different. Fisher was asked about a variety of things that might be under consideration for the committee this year, including the possibility of moving the extra point from being snapped from the 2-yard line to the 15.
The NFL experimented with that change in the 2014 preseason with the idea being to make a play that had become a foregone conclusion something with a little more pressure involved.
In the first two weeks of exhibition games, teams attempted 141 extra points with kickers missing eight times for a percentage of 94.3 percent from the new distance. During the regular season, kickers also missed eight extra points, though those misses came on 1,230 attempts for a conversion rate of 99.3 percent.
So while the preseason experiment offered a much smaller sample size, it did come with a bit more variance in terms of makes and misses. It's a variance that Fisher said in Indianapolis he's not OK with and he made a solid analogy to illustrate his argument.
"Personally I don't want to kick a 19-yard field goal to win a game, and then miss a 35-yard extra point in Green Bay when it's 20 degrees to lose a game," Fisher said. "So that's my position. I think it would be too drastic of a change, me personally."
Dean Blandino, the NFL's head of officiating, previously said he expected the extra point to change in the "near future." Those discussions figure to be ongoing but given the amount of concern around the league about things like the "completing the catch" rule and the matter of managing the inflation process of the balls, it's possible the extra point conversation could take a backseat.
