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Two-point conversion
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In American and Canadian football, a two-point conversion is a play a team attempts instead of kicking an extra point immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run a play from close to the opponent's goal line (5-yard line in Canadian, 3-yard line in amateur American, 2-yard line in professional American) and advance the ball across the goal line in the same manner as if they were scoring a touchdown.
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Encyclopedia
In American and Canadian football, a two-point conversion is a play a team attempts instead of kicking an extra point immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run a play from close to the opponent's goal line (5-yard line in Canadian, 3-yard line in amateur American, 2-yard line in professional American) and advance the ball across the goal line in the same manner as if they were scoring a touchdown. If the team succeeds, it earns two additional points on top of the six points for the touchdown. If the team fails, no additonal points are scored, and the team proceeds to a kickoff.
Various sources estimate the success rate of a two-point conversion to be between 40% and 55%, significantly lower than that of the extra point, though if the higher value is to be believed, a higher expected value is achieved through the two-point conversion than the extra point.
The 2009 NFC Championship Game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals saw two two-point conversion attempts in the second half of the game. First, the Eagles attempted it, and failed, to make up for the earlier loss of the extra point in a touchdown. In the very next drive, the Cardinals made a two-point conversion after their touchdown, to give themselves a 7-point lead.
Adoption of rule
The two-point conversion rule has been used in college football since 1958 and more recently in Canadian amateur football and the Canadian Football League. In overtime situations in college football, the two-point conversion is the mandatory method of scoring after a touchdown beginning with the third overtime.
The American Football League used the two-point conversion during its ten seasons from 1960 to 1969. After the NFL merged with the AFL, the rule did not immediately carry over to the merged league, though they experimented in 1968 with a compromise rule (see below). The NFL adopted the two-point conversion rule in 1994, prompted by its usage in the short-lived USFL.
The NFL's developmental league, NFL Europa (and its former entity, the World League of American Football), adopted the two-point conversion rule for its entire existence from 1991 through 2007.
Six-man football reverses the extra point and the two-point conversion: because there is no offensive line in that league, making kick protection more difficult, plays from scrimmage are worth one point but successful kicks are worth two. It is also reversed in many high school football leagues, since there are not often skilled kickers at that level.
The Arena Football League has recognized the two-point conversion for its entire existence, allowing for either a play from scrimmage or a drop kick to be worth two points. (The additional extra point for a drop kick is unique to arena football.)
In 1968, leading up to the AFL-NFL merger, the leagues developed a radical "compromise" rule that would reconcile the fact that the NFL did not recognize the two point conversion but the AFL did: the relatively easy extra point kick would be eliminated and only a play from scrimmage would score one point. The rule would be used for the interleague matchups for that preseason, and would not be tried again. Both the World Football League and the XFL revived this concept, making it a point not to institute a two-point conversion rule so as to eliminate the easy kick. What would constitute a two-point conversion in other leagues only counted one point in the AFL-NFL games, WFL, or XFL. However, the XFL later added a rule in the playoffs that allowed the scoring team to score two (or even three) points by successfully executing a play from a point farther from the opponent's end zone (two points if the team could score from the five-yard line and three points if they could score from the ten-yard line). The proposed New United States Football League, set to begin play in 2010, plans to adopt a three-point conversion opportunity from the 10 yard line, while keeping the standard extra point and two-point conversion rules in place.
Defensive two-point conversion
In American college and Canadian football (as well as, for a significant period of time, the Arena Football League, where missed extra points are rebounded back into the field of play), an intercepted two-point attempt, or one otherwise recovered by the defense, or a blocked extra point kick, can be returned to the other end zone to give the defensive team two points. However the ball is dead upon an interception in the NFL. The team that scored the touchdown then kicks off as normal. This is rare because of the infrequent use of the two-point conversion and the rarity of blocked extra points, and also because of the difficulty in returning the ball the full length of the field. It has proven the winning margin in some games. Only once has an individual player scored more than a single defensive two-point conversion in a game: Tony Holmes of the Texas Longhorns in a 1998 game against the Iowa State Cyclones.
The NFL and high schools that follow the rules of the National Federation of State High School Associations (all U.S. high schools except those in Texas and Massachusetts, which use NCAA rules instead) do not allow this, and a two-point attempt resulting in recovery of the ball by the defense is merely 'no good', although it can, on rare occasions, result in a one-point safety. This one-point safety is the only way a team can have a score of just one point during the course of an American football game. (College and high school football assign a 1–0 score for a forfeited game.) Canadian football, however, allows another one-point play called the single, or rouge.
Mathematical Application of the Two Point Conversion
In 2007, blogger Eric Menhart analyzed the value of going for a two point conversion compared to a field goal style extra point in the National Football League, concluding that teams are usually better served kicking the extra point in most cases. This counters Tuesday Morning Quarterback columnist Gregg Easterbrook's theory that since the average yards gained on a typical scrimmage play is 5 yards, that the opposite is true and that the two-point conversion would, on average, bring a greater point value return; furthermore, Easterbrook cites the Football Prospectus, which says that the average success rate on a two-point conversion is between 50% and 55%, depending on the time frame used and the situations in which the conversion is attempted. What should be noted is that the two-point conversion usually involves goal-line defenses and are thus not typical scrimmage plays, resulting in shorter average gains.
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