Punting PATs?

The latest musings from his eminence, Commissioner Roger Goodell, is that the point after touchdown (PAT) is becoming an old relic of a bygone year of football.  It's not exciting since teams convert it at a 99.6% clip.  It's essentially an "automatic point."  And of course since Mr. Goodell wants all aspects of football to be "exciting," he therefore has entertained some "proposals" for how it can be banished like the fumblerooski. 

Let's examine what might happen if in fact the PAT is in fact punted:

One option would have touchdowns going from 6 to 7 points at which point the scoring team would have the option of keeping the 7 or going for an extra point by running a 2-point conversion play.  If the conversion fails, you would "lose" the 7th point and go back down to 6.  What is this, the SAT?  Is that the "guessing penalty?"  I never in my wildest would have ever seen a competitive sport have teams lose points in a game...not to mention losing a point after they HAD JUST SCORED. 

The other option would be to move the PAT kick back about 10 yards so that it's not as "automatic" as a scrimmage kick from the 2 yard line.  However, a 2-point play would still be from the 2.  Welp, that effectively takes the 2-point fake out of the playbook.  You don't see it often, but I tell you when it does happen, it is quite effective.  If a team elects to line up for a PAT in this format, there would virtually be no risk for a fake (not a guarantee of course...but 1 play from the 2 or a fake field goal from the 12?  You be the judge.)

Goodell's rationale for this brilliant idea is that the PAT is "automatic."  Yes, PATs are missed about as often as referees get calls right, but let's turn on the wayback machine, shall we?  You don't want to be the team to be in that 0.4% of misses...

Example 1: Super Bowl XVIII.  A dark day indeed for Redskins fans, it could've been different.  The Raiders led at halftime 21-3.  The Redskins took the 2nd half kickoff and marched all the way for a TD to make it 21-9.  However, Mark Mosely (who was having a terrible playoffs) had the PAT blocked.  This miss killed just about any momentum the Redskins might have had following the TD.  Alas, they never scored again yet watched helplessly as Marcus Allen did a do-si-do and the Raiders cruised 38-9

Example 2: From 2005, observe.

The Saints had just completed a wacky Stanford-band type play with triple zeros on the clock to bring themselves within 20-19 with no time left.  Obviously the option here is to either kick the PAT and go to overtime, or go for broke and win with the deuce try.  The odds certainly favor the PAT as discussed, so Haslett decided to kick.  Carney was wide right and the cat-calls and paper bags were out yet again in what would be a lost season for the 'Aints.  But if Carney had made it, who knows?

Those were just a couple well-known examples of how games turned on PATs, or missed ones in these cases.  Misses of that magnitude are even rarer than misses period, but the point is that the PAT may not be quite as automatic as Mr. Goodell thinks.  As I said, do you want to be THAT team that happens to miss one in critical situations such as these?  That being said, that should be enough of a reason to keep the PAT as is. 

Finally, if the idea behind getting rid of PATs is to make the game more "exciting," he is sorely mistaken.  Football is by its very nature an exciting game.  With all the talk of concussion safety and hard hits, one does not need to follow football to know that it by its very nature is an exciting game.  You want to keep the game exciting?  Don't do something stupid like eliminate kickoffs, but that's another issue.