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The NFL announced on Tuesday that they will move extra points to the 15-yard line. This creates a 32-to-33 yard field goal, which the NFL hopes will make the play a little more interesting. The current success rate of extra points is over 99 percent. Last year, the success rate between 30 and 34 yards was 95.8 percent (136-of-142). It is not a huge change, but it is a bit of a change.
Phil Dawson has had no real trouble on field goals in this range, as this stat shows:
49ers K Phil Dawson is the leader among active kickers with 100% accuracy on 32 or 33 yard FG since 2001: he's 28 of 28, per @ESPNStatsInfo.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) May 19, 2015
The decision to move the extra point back brought plenty of responses, including some snark from kicker Graham Gano.
Should have changed the extra point to a 50 yard field goal. That would have been more interesting .
— Graham Gano (@GrahamGano) May 19, 2015
Jay Feely brought up an interesting point about injury concerns.
60-80 extra points per team that the defense didn't rush hard but now they will bring it. There will be injuries https://t.co/yNqVr9Ktpx
— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) May 19, 2015
I am curious to see how much different teams handle extra points on defense now, and indeed if there will be other injuries. Florio suggested teams might occasionally fake the XP attempt from the 15 since nobody would expect it. I would not expect that anytime soon even if the expectation is that teams will always kick. But if somebody is caught napping on the extra point with such a play, I could see defenses wising up pretty quickly.
And maybe that does open the door for more injuries. There has been chatter about potential changes to kickoffs to improve player safety. I think extra point injuries would be a bit more freak-ish given that players not running at each other in the same manner, but injuries are certainly still something to consider.