Bill Belichick is not a fan of extra points

In the NFL, touchdowns only reward you six points, but it has become a foregone conclusion that kickers will boot the extra point through the uprights to give their team seven points. Kickers can almost automatically knock in an extra point, but that is not something that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick appears to be a fan of.

While Belichick would like to see kicking stay a part of the game, he would like to see the NFL do something about making field goals less automatic and more exciting.

“I personally would love to see the kicking game remain as a very integral part of the game so that the kickoffs are returned and so that extra points are not over 99 percent converted because that’s not what extra points were when they were initially put into the game back 80 years ago, whatever it was,” Belichick said.

“I would be in favor of not seeing it be an over 99 percent conversion rate. It’s virtually automatic. That’s just not the way the extra point was put into the game. It was an extra point that you actually had to execute and it was executed by players who were not specialists, they were position players.

“It was a lot harder for them to do. The Gino Cappellettis of the world and so forth and they were very good. It’s not like it is now where it’s well over 99 percent. I don’t think that’s really a very exciting play because it’s so automatic.”

Belichick has toyed around with drop kicks in the past, which would be one way of doing things, or the NFL could consider forcing teams to run a play to secure the extra point.

One way to spice things up would be to make teams run a play from the two-yard line for an extra point, while moving the two-point conversion line back to the five. It may take some convincing to ever get a rule change regarding extra points, but if more people out there are interested in Belichick’s thought process then it is something that the league could eventually consider.