NFL to consider nine-point touchdown?
You had to click, didn’t you? That headline was just too juicy to ignore. And not only juicy, but totally legitimate.
Well, legitimate depending on how you define the word “consider.”
Allow us to explain.
Next Monday in Arizona, NFL teams will convene for the annual league meetings, which, among other things, are used to formally present and discuss rules change proposals. This year, the league will bring proposals for 23 potential rules changes to the floor. And while most of the proposals are mired in minutiae – replay review logistics, more exact definitions of “peel back” blocks, etc. – it’s Rule Proposal No. 15, offered up by the Indianapolis Colts, that will prove most attention-grabbing. Or head-scratching. Or downright insane.
The Colts are proposing, as the headline suggests, the possibility of a nine-point touchdown, which would occur if a team scored its touchdown, then opted to go for a two-point conversion. If that conversion was successful, Indianapolis is lobbying for the league to consider installing a one-point bonus kick try with the line of scrimmage at the 32-yard line.
In essence, teams would be able to attempt a 50-yard field goal for a ninth point without any consequence for missing.
Sounds like some old-school Nintendo cheat code reward. Or something out of MTV’s old “Rock N’ Jock” games.
The Colts have explained their rules change pitch as a way to provide greater incentive for teams to go for two more often. And that isn’t a bad intent.
The rule proposal itself? Well, we’ll see how the Colts are greeted in Phoenix next week when they take the floor to formally pitch the change.
The other 31 teams in the league will consider the proposal. Because they have to. At least for a breath or two. But the chances of it being voted into the rules seem ultra-slim.
On a conference call Wednesday afternoon, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisherseemed less than enthused by the Colts’ proposal.
“As we go through the process here (next) week, we’ll let (the Colts) go ahead and discuss it in more detail,” said Fisher, a member of the league’s competition committee. “But that’s our understanding – that if a team elects to go for two and you’re successful, then you would get a bonus point (field goal try).”
Neither Fisher not competition committee chairman Rich McKay could recall another proposal quite as radical as this one. But hey, it’s worth talking about, right?
As for the other rules change proposals, the Chicago Bears want their voice heard on a couple of suggestions. Rule Proposal No. 17, pitched by the Bears, suggests that both teams get a chance to have a possession in overtime games, eliminating the sudden-death nature of a contest that ends when the team with the ball first in overtime scores a TD on its opening possession.
That, of course, is what happened in January’s NFC Championship game when the Green Bay Packers never had the ball in overtime and lost to the Seattle Seahawks 28-22 on a 35-yard TD pass from Russell Wilson to Jermaine Kearse on the first possession of OT.
The Bears also have proposed that replay review rules be expanded to make the expiration of the play clock reviewable. That pitch would offer the opportunity to rectify instances in which the on-field officiating crew doesn’t recognize the expiration of the play clock and a play is allowed to be run after the clock hits zero.
The logistics of instant replay review will be heavily debated in several rules change proposals at the league meetings. But how much the current system is expanded or changed remains to be seen.
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