NFL to reportedly study whether it should narrow field goal uprights

The NFL will place chips in kicking balls during the preseason to track results

NFL kickers have not made less than 80 percent of their field goal attempts in over a decade, nor less than 82.4 percent since 2009. Possibly as a result of that fact, the NFL will conduct a study this season to determine whether the uprights should be narrowed, according to the Toronto Sun, which conducted an interview with NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino on the subject.

"That would be one way to affect both the extra point and the field goal," Blandino said, per the Sun. "(Success rates) have continued to climb over the years as our field-goal kickers and that whole process has become so specialized, from long snapper to holder to kicker. We'll do some studies this year."

One of those studies will include the placing of microchips inside kicking balls so that the NFL can study, among other things, how far inside the uprights all successful field goals and extra points are kicked. As of now, the plan is to use these balls for the preseason, but if the study goes well the practice could continue into the regular season as well.

Blandino told the Sun that if the study goes well, the uprights could be narrowed as soon as the 2017 season. "You never know," he said. "We'll see what the data tells us. The committee will discuss it and then make a recommendation for 2017 if they feel that we need to go that route. But I wouldn't know at this point, without seeing how it goes this year."

If the NFL does narrow the uprights, that will undoubtedly affect the conversion rate of not only field goal attempts, but extra points. In the first year of the NFL's 32-yard extra point, kickers league wide made 94.1 percent of their attempts. That already made the average extra point less valuable than going for a two-point conversion. Were the rate of success on extra points to drop even more, that gap would widen and it could possibly motivate teams to go for two more often. Of course, some NFL coaches would still refuse to go for it out of fear, but the logical ones would start following the math.