Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Why did the extra point come into being in the first place? Was it just to help increase the scoring all that much more and make it appear like more scoring was going on then in baseball and other sports such as soccer?

lastcat3 wrote:Why did the extra point come into being in the first place? Was it just to help increase the scoring all that much more and make it appear like more scoring was going on then in baseball and other sports such as soccer?

Rugby also has a conversion. So it predates American football.

Presumably it allows for fewer ties, when missing conversions is at least somewhat frequent. I like to point out that it's a fairly arbitrary part of the game that dates back forever.

Offsetting penalties make no sense sometimes. In the Bears Jets game yesterday, the Bears completed a 20 yard pass on 3rd & 7. The Jets were called for roughing the passer and the Bears for unnecessary roughness. The result was offsetting penalties and it was 3rd & 7 again?! Neither penalty made a difference to the play, with both being after the fact. The Bears wind up losing 20 yards and ultimately punting. OK, so there are obviously mutliple combinations of offsetting penalties, but surely sometimes the outcome of the play should still stand?

LJP wrote:Offsetting penalties make no sense sometimes. In the Bears Jets game yesterday, the Bears completed a 20 yard pass on 3rd & 7. The Jets were called for roughing the passer and the Bears for unnecessary roughness. The result was offsetting penalties and it was 3rd & 7 again?! Neither penalty made a difference to the play, with both being after the fact. The Bears wind up losing 20 yards and ultimately punting. OK, so there are obviously mutliple combinations of offsetting penalties, but surely sometimes the outcome of the play should still stand?

What you're saying, essentially, is that the Bears should not be penalized for unnecessary roughness.

Think about the results if only one of the penalties had been committed.

If that one penalty was the roughing the passer call against the Jets, it would be refused and the Bears would get their 20-yard gain.

If that one penalty was the unnecessary roughness call against the Bears, they would be penalized 15 yards and they'd lose the 20-yard gain--a total loss of 35 yards.

So, if both penalties are simply ignored, as you seem to suggest, the Bears are the big winners and they get away with unnecessary roughness.

I believe at one point early in the game's history (pre-NFL) the conversion was actually worth more points then the actual touchdown. The point in scoring the touchdown was because it gave a team a chance to try for the conversion.

rhickok1109 wrote:

LJP wrote:Offsetting penalties make no sense sometimes. In the Bears Jets game yesterday, the Bears completed a 20 yard pass on 3rd & 7. The Jets were called for roughing the passer and the Bears for unnecessary roughness. The result was offsetting penalties and it was 3rd & 7 again?! Neither penalty made a difference to the play, with both being after the fact. The Bears wind up losing 20 yards and ultimately punting. OK, so there are obviously mutliple combinations of offsetting penalties, but surely sometimes the outcome of the play should still stand?

What you're saying, essentially, is that the Bears should not be penalized for unnecessary roughness.

Think about the results if only one of the penalties had been committed.

If that one penalty was the roughing the passer call against the Jets, it would be refused and the Bears would get their 20-yard gain.

If that one penalty was the unnecessary roughness call against the Bears, they would be penalized 15 yards and they'd lose the 20-yard gain--a total loss of 35 yards.

So, if both penalties are simply ignored, as you seem to suggest, the Bears are the big winners and they get away with unnecessary roughness.

If the only penalty were the roughing the passer call against the Jets, then it would have been a 15 yard penalty tacked on to the 20 yard gain. I believe RTP is technically a personal foul; those penalties aren't declined in favor of the result of the play.

Todd Pence wrote:I believe at one point early in the game's history (pre-NFL) the conversion was actually worth more points then the actual touchdown. The point in scoring the touchdown was because it gave a team a chance to try for the conversion.

You're right about the XP being worth more than a TD, but it was for only one season (1883).

https://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson ... hanges.txt

One thing they should change now.

Steelers Ravens game ended with one of those million lateral plays. At one point, one of the laterals was clearly forward, and a flag was thrown. The play continued on for a while until the ball was fumbled out of bounds.

Maybe the officials should have the power to blow the play dead after the forward lateral. Why risk injury or some dumb offsetting penalty on these silly plays?

Jay Z wrote:One thing they should change now.

Steelers Ravens game ended with one of those million lateral plays. At one point, one of the laterals was clearly forward, and a flag was thrown. The play continued on for a while until the ball was fumbled out of bounds.

Maybe the officials should have the power to blow the play dead after the forward lateral. Why risk injury or some dumb offsetting penalty on these silly plays?

I think once the team with the ball commits a penalty of any kind on a play after the clock has run out, the game is considered over. If the other team commits a penalty after that, the offsetting penalties does not come into effect.

LJP wrote:Offsetting penalties make no sense sometimes. In the Bears Jets game yesterday, the Bears completed a 20 yard pass on 3rd & 7. The Jets were called for roughing the passer and the Bears for unnecessary roughness. The result was offsetting penalties and it was 3rd & 7 again?! Neither penalty made a difference to the play, with both being after the fact. The Bears wind up losing 20 yards and ultimately punting. OK, so there are obviously mutliple combinations of offsetting penalties, but surely sometimes the outcome of the play should still stand?

If one team committed a foul they shouldn't be rewarded with the play standing just because the other team committed one too. Particularly if your foul had a direct effect on the outcome of a play