How important are point-after plays, better known as conversions? You might ask the Las Vegas Raiders, the Riverton Wolverines, or the Big Piney Punchers.
Though they play at different levels, they all lost close games by a play that takes no time off the clock after a touchdown is scored. In the Punchers’ case, they lost a pair of them that way.
For the Raiders, there is no excuse, professional athletes and coaches should be held to a higher standard, their obscene salaries more than offset the criticism they receive when a play fails.
Soon-to-be departed Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels elected to go for two in a Monday night game with the Kansas City Chiefs. Instead of using Daniel Carlson, one of the top three kickers in the entire NFL to hit a conversion to tie the game at 30, McDaniels claimed “the metrics” called for a two-point conversion attempt. I’m guessing another metric will soon send him packing as the Denver Broncos did with him back in 2010.
Lander Valley’s 29-28 overtime win over Riverton presents another kind of metric, the kind not associated with a computer, but one that comes in a coach well attuned to the abilities of his team.
In what will be considered one of the classic contests in the long rivalry between the Wolverines and the Tigers Lander head coach John Scott decided to roll the dice rather than extend the Friday-to-Monday delayed game into a second overtime.
Riverton scored easily from the 10-yard line in the California-style overtime. Newly arrived quarterback Nathan Hutchison nearly scored on first down on a run ending just a couple of feet short of the goal line. He easily put the Wolverines ahead on the next play. Freshman Branson Saltsgaver hit the conversion and the pressure was on the Tigers to either tie the game at 28, lose on downs or go for the win on a two-point conversion.
A Riverton encroachment penalty gave Lander a first and goal at the five-yard line and four plays to get into the end zone. It wasn’t that easy. On the first three plays, the Tigers only gained three yards.
On fourth down, Scott called a fade to Evan Stephenson from quarterback Brenon Stauffenberg for a touchdown.
Scott had a similar decision to McDaniels and had a kicker with similar credentials, albeit at the high school level in senior Matisse Weaver who is a machine at converting extra-point kicks.
Weaver has been automatic on short conversions kicks, but an extended game played with four downs from the 10-yard line wasn’t in Lander’s favor.
The slant pattern to Gabe Harris from Stauffenberg was the perfect call on the winning two-point conversion and the Tigers escaped with a thrilling 29-28 win.
Such is the importance of the extra point in football at any level.
Some teams excel at the conversion and some struggle. To say Big Piney struggles with the conversion is an understatement.
The Punchers are a solid 9-man football team, they run well, they pass well, they play tough defense, and they lost two out of their three most important conference games thanks to the lack of converting a point after of any kind.
In their only win against good West Conference teams, they missed both conversion attempts in a 12-8 decision over Rocky Mountain at home. The conversion didn’t matter in that one, since their defense held the Grizzlies to a single score, but one more touchdown and it was at least a two-point loss.
Big Piney tied Wind River with three touchdowns and Shoshoni with four, but they lost both games.
Piney missed all seven conversions in those two games.
Wind River won the game on a two-point conversion run by Cooper Frederick 20-18.
Shoshoni used a Pehton Truempler run, and a pair of one-point conversion kicks by Dominic Jarvis to win 28-24.
In speaking with a frustrated Big Piney assistant coach after dinner at the La Cabana restaurant in Big Piney I learned that the conversion has been a problem all season. He related how Big Piney had missed all 13 conversion attempts on the year, but he was still miffed after the game and didn’t realize they were slightly better than that.
The Punchers have scored 16 touchdowns this year and had a successful two-point conversion against Lusk in a 14-6 season-opening win, and another in a 32-12 win at Greybull.
Converting two-of-16 isn’t that comforting when they could just have easily been 6-0 instead of 4-2 on the season if they could add a few points after a score.
Many teams have separate sets of plays for two-point conversion kicks and spend substantial amounts of time on their kicking game.
It’s harder to convert a kick in 6-man football than in any other division, yet David Trembly’s Dubois Rams always have a kicker. This season kicker Nick Navas with just four blockers to hold off a six-man rush is extremely efficient. He hit seven-of-10 kicks a couple of weeks ago against Meeteetse.
Kicking is the easy way to score if you have time, talent, and coordination between the snapper, holder, and kicker and a line that will block.
As a coach, I taught the boys to cross-step, interlocking legs on the offensive line on conversion kicks and field goals. It prevents any penetration by opposing defenses. I don’t see that much anymore, but Cokeville still does it and while they rarely hit field goals, the Panthers rarely miss conversion kicks.
For two-point plays, the swinging gate, the wildcat, and spread formations are all nice additions to teams that run the pro set, the power-I, or the wing-T as their base offense.
In a swinging gate, the center lines up alone with a single back behind him. The other nine players, or seven in the case of 9-man, line up to the left or right, with six players on the line in 11-man, or four in 9-man, and the rest lining up behind them.
If the defense doesn’t shift, it’s an easy two points for the single back. The snapper blocks the player on him and the back angles to the corner. If the defense shifts too many players on the center, it’s an easy pass to one of the backs behind a wall of blockers and it’s a two-point conversion pass play. The swinging gate sometimes referred to as the “Lonesome Polecat” is as good an extra point formation as there is.
If the defense lines up correctly, the offense just shifts back into a regular formation and either kick the ball or runs a play.
It sounds simpler than it is.
The spread formation is just a way of getting the defense to spread out on the congested three-yard line. Once they do, the quarterback can sneak up the middle, run to a corner pylon on an angle or toss a pass to one of the five receivers dancing around in the end zone.
The conversion doesn’t have to be that hard, but once you’re in a rut like the Punchers have been on point after attempts it just seems to mushroom.
In the end, a one-point win is as good as a running clock and a 50-point cushion if you’re the team with the upper hand. In a good game, that hand is always played on the conversion.