two-point conversion

In gridiron football, a two-point conversion or two-point convert is a play a team attempts instead of kicking a one-point conversion immediately after it scores a touchdown. In a two-point conversion attempt, the team that just scored must run a play from scrimmage close to the opponent's goal line (5-yard line in amateur Canadian, 3-yard line in professional Canadian, 3-yard line in amateur American, 2-yard line in professional American; in professional American football, there is a small dash to denote the line of scrimmage for a two-point conversion; it was also the previous line of scrimmage for a point-after kick until 2014) 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, for a total of eight points. If the team fails, no additional points are scored. In either case, if any time remains in the half, 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 because of the higher value, a higher expected value is achieved through the two-point conversion than the extra point.

Adoption of rule

The two-point conversion rule was instituted in college football in 1958, and in 1975 in Canadian amateur football and the Canadian Football League (CFL). In overtime in college football, two-point attempts are mandatory starting with double overtime, and in the CFL they are mandatory at any point in overtime.

The American Football League (AFL) used the two-point conversion during its ten-season existence 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 , 25 years after the merger. Tom Tupa scored the first two-point conversion in NFL history, running in a faked one-point attempt for the Cleveland Browns in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals in the first week of the 1994 season. He scored a total of three such conversions that season, earning him the nickname "Two-Point Tupa". That same season, the first two-point conversion in Super Bowl history came during Super Bowl XXIX when San Diego Charger Mark Seay caught a pass thrown by Stan Humphries.

The United States Football League adopted the two-point conversion rule for its entire existence 1983–85. The NFL's developmental league, NFL Europe (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 game variant, 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 and youth football leagues, since there are not often skilled kickers at that level. A variant of this, especially at the youth level, is to allow one point for a running conversion, two points for a passing conversion, and two points for a successful kick.

The Arena Football League has recognized the two-point conversion for its entire existence (in both its original 1987–2008 incarnation and its 2010–2019 revival), 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 reconciled the fact that the NFL did not use the two-point conversion but the AFL did: the relatively easy one-point kick would be eliminated and only a play from scrimmage could score one point called a "pressure point". The rule was used for the interleague matchups for that preseason, and was not 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 counted only one point in the AFL–NFL games, WFL, or XFL. The WFL called it the "action point", used after touchdowns, which the WFL counted as seven points. 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).

During the summer of 2014, the conversion by place kick was reviewed by the NFL. The proposed format would have awarded seven points for a touchdown without an extra-point attempt, eight points with a successful conversion by running or passing, and six points with an unsuccessful attempt. This new format was proposed because of the almost certain probability of making a conversion by place kick (1,260 out of 1,265 for the 2013 season). This proposal was never considered at the league owners' meeting in spring 2014; instead, the league used the first two weeks of its preseason for an experiment that moved one-point attempts back to the 20-yard line with the condition that if a team opted to attempt a two-point conversion instead, the line of scrimmage on the try would remain at the 2-yard line. The league adopted a slightly modified version of this rule starting with the 2015 season, with the line of scrimmage for one-point kick attempts at the 15-yard line instead of the 20; that same year, the CFL also moved back its line of scrimmage for one-point converts to the 25-yard line (while moving the scrimmage line for a two-point convert ahead two yards to the 3-yard line), thus making the length for a one-point attempt the same in both the NFL and CFL (taking into account the NFL's goalposts on the end line, and the CFL's on the goal line).

In the Alliance of American Football (which played only one season, 2019), two-point conversion attempts were mandatory after touchdowns.

Defensive two-point conversion

In American college, professional, and Canadian football (as well as, for a significant period of time, the Arena Football League, where missed extra points were rebounded back into the field of play), a conversion attempt where the defense gains possession of the ball can be returned by the defense to the other end zone to give the defensive team two points. 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 conversion kicks, combined with the difficulty of returning the ball the full length of the field. It has proven the winning margin in some games, the first such college game occurring September 10, 1988, when St. John's defeated Iona College, 26–24. Only once has a player scored two defensive two-point conversions in a game: Tony Holmes of the Texas Longhorns in a 1998 game against the Iowa State Cyclones on October 3.

The NFL originally had no provision for defensive two-point conversions, and its rules used to state that a conversion was automatically blown dead and ruled as "no good" as soon as the defense gained possession of the ball. On May 19, 2015, the NFL owners adopted a proposal to permit a defensive two-point conversion for the season. On May 20, 2016, the owners adopted a further proposal called the two-point fair-play rule: this prevents the defense from getting a turnover during a 2-point conversion and then intentionally committing a foul to increase their chance at a 2-point return. If the defense gains a turnover and then commits a foul, the offense coach will have the option to accept the penalty and skip the kickoff. It has not yet been enforced in the NFL, but a similar rule has been enforced on two occasions in the CFL.

Stephone Anthony of the New Orleans Saints became the first NFL player to score a defensive two-point conversion, returning a blocked extra-point kick from Graham Gano of the Carolina Panthers