As you know by now, Roger Goodell suggested this week that the NFL could abolish the extra point.
As you also could probably guess, long snappers are opposed to such a move. Or at least, Washington’s long snapper is.
Hey @nflcommish please don’t take away half my job. Numbers are great bc we take pride in being perfect. #SpecialistsAreExcitingToo
— Nick Sundberg (@NickSundberg) January 21, 2014
#SpecialistsAreExcitingToo is an excellent hashtag, for the record.
Anyhow, Sundberg was on 106.7 The Fan Wednesday morning to offer his further thoughts on this possibility.
“That’s just good old headlines by Roger, I think,” Sundberg told Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier. “I don’t know. He says he wants to make the league more exciting, or he wants to make every play more exciting. Listening to you guys and I’ve heard this before too: move [PATs] back. I agree. Don’t make it a gimme. Move it back, back it a 50-yard field goal, 45, 40, whatever you want. But don’t just get rid of it entirely. I think that’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Then Sundberg mounted a slippery-slope defense of special-teamers.
“Once the extra points are gone, the field goals are gone too, c’mon,” he argued. “Then kickoffs are gone; then kickers are gone entirely. And if you’re not gonna kick off, why would you punt? So then specialists are gone entirely. It’s a slippery slope we’re on.”
So how to make the rote punctuation marks that follow NFL touchdowns more interesting?
“Let’s be honest, people are gonna get up and walk away during special teams anyways,” Sundberg said. “That’s just what’s going to happen. I’d say look at the statistics, and pick a [yardage] number that is made 75 percent of the time, or 70 percent of the time. If it’s from 48 [yards], then it’s from 48. If it’s from 52, it’s 52. If it’s 41, it’s 41. But find a number that isn’t perfect, like they’re saying. … If you’re going to change it, change it, but keep it in the game. It’s the same thing with making receivers ballerinas. They’re still in the game, and you can [only] touch them occasionally. But it’s not like it used to be. So keep it in the game. It used to be in the game, so keep it in the game, but let’s make it a little more difficult.”
