% of 10 yd XPs that were missed, not blocked

[Jay Z]

Someone here must track this. How many % of XP kicks at the "classic" 10 yard distance were simply shanked, not blocked, for a miss? I would take any stats you have. Just curious.

[Rupert Patrick]

I don't have any stats on blocks. From 1933-1973 NFL, AFL, AAFC combined, there were approximately 21,027 extra point attempts in regular season games and 19,819 were successful, a 94.26 success percentage. Of the 1,208 or so misses, I would guess a fair number of them (20-25 percent) were low kicks that got over the line but never cleared the crossbar but probably would have been good had it been a slightly longer field goal try. I flag blocked field goals but I don't keep track of the number of them; however, I would guess the percentage of missed field goal attempts that are blocked during the 1933-73 era is maybe around 10 percent, and I think that number is probably about the same today. Of the remaining 65-70 percent of misses, I would guess half of those hit the goalposts, which would leave us with about a third of all missed extra points that clear the goalposts altogether. I think a number of those can be blamed on the wind not the kicker, and at a rough guess, I would estimate 20 to 25 percent of all missed 10-yard extra points were actually shanked, where they didn't even hit the goal posts.

[TodMaher]

Someone here must track this. How many % of XP kicks at the "classic" 10 yard distance were simply shanked, not blocked, for a miss? I would take any stats you have. Just curious.

From 1994 to 2014:
21183 Attempts
20907 Made
98.7% Made
103 Blocked
0.5% Blocked
173 Missed
0.8% Missed

[Mark L. Ford]

Someone here must track this. How many % of XP kicks at the "classic" 10 yard distance were simply shanked, not blocked, for a miss? I would take any stats you have. Just curious.

Interesting question. The resources here would make this one a bit easier to research than usual, thanks to the linescores compiled at the MO section by Gary Selby and helpers. Searching the phrase "kick failed" would include both blocks and mistakes by the kicker, holder or center. For 1960, the search turned up a match 22 times in the new AFL's 57 games, and 10 in the NFL's 79 games. One game stood out -- a November 20 meeting where Buffalo's Bill Atkins failed on three of his attempts in a 32-3 upset over the host L.A. Chargers. Looking at the news story, two of the kicks were blocked and the other one went wide after a hurried attempt following a high snap from center.

[Mark L. Ford]

I'd add that this is probably one of the many instances where nobody has done any tracking-- not yet, anyway. One thing about researching pro football history (as opposed to, say, baseball history) is that there's still a lot of stuff out there that hasn't been researched. It may be an exaggeration to say that historians can still "get in on the ground floor", but figuratively speaking, I think it's still on the 1st or 2nd floor when it comes to things that haven't been looked at before. SABR members might disagree, but I tend to think that it's difficult to find much uncharted territory to explore in baseball research.

[TodMaher]

I'd add that this is probably one of the many instances where nobody has done any tracking-- not yet, anyway. One thing about researching pro football history (as opposed to, say, baseball history) is that there's still a lot of stuff out there that hasn't been researched. It may be an exaggeration to say that historians can still "get in on the ground floor", but figuratively speaking, I think it's still on the 1st or 2nd floor when it comes to things that haven't been looked at before. SABR members might disagree, but I tend to think that it's difficult to find much uncharted territory to explore in baseball research.

I have "tracked" 927 blocked XP kicks from 1920-2017.

[Mark L. Ford]

I have "tracked" 927 blocked XP kicks from 1920-2017.

I saw your post earlier in the thread for the period from 1994 to 2014 (103 blocked during that 21 season period of a little more than 5,000 games, a little less than 1 out of every 50 games). I'm not sure if I've got my arithmetic right on this one, but 927 blocks in 98 seasons (about 16,000 games or a block every 17 games or so) suggests that the defenders aren't breaking through the line as often as they used to.

I would expect fewer missed kicks as the kicking game has evolved, even taking into account the increased distance-- but not a significant change, let alone a big change, in the frequency of someone getting past the front line in order to block a conversion attempt.

[Rupert Patrick]

I have "tracked" 927 blocked XP kicks from 1920-2017.

I saw your post earlier in the thread for the period from 1994 to 2014 (103 blocked during that 21 season period of a little more than 5,000 games, a little less than 1 out of every 50 games). I'm not sure if I've got my arithmetic right on this one, but 927 blocks in 98 seasons (about 16,000 games or a block every 17 games or so) suggests that the defenders aren't breaking through the line as often as they used to.

I would expect fewer missed kicks as the kicking game has evolved, even taking into account the increased distance-- but not a significant change, let alone a big change, in the frequency of someone getting past the front line in order to block a conversion attempt.

Here are some numbers about the increased distance of extra points and evolution of the kicking game - in 1973, the final season of the 10-yard extra point, the league success percentage was 96.79 percent. It predictably dropped like a stone in 1974, and took another small dip in 1976 due to expansion, but began to slowly increase from there, and in 1991, the league success percentage of the 20-yard extra point was 97.25 percent (surpassing the 1973 figure), and kept increasing until it hit 99.61 percent in 2013 when they went to the 33-yard extra point in 2015. The league success percentage at 33 yards dropped to a low of 93.64 percent in 2016 and has increased over each of the past two seasons; it was at 94.25 percent in 2018. If they don't monkey around with the distance of the extra point attempt, the extra point rate from 33 yards will be around 97 percent within 15 years.

Trivia - the 1965 AFL as a whole was 267 of 267 in extra point attempts.

[ChrisBabcock]

Trivia - the 1965 AFL as a whole was 267 of 267 in extra point attempts.

For that era, wow.