NFL Playoff Picture Has Been Reshaped by the Two-Point Runback

Take a trip with us into an alternate reality.

The Raiders are in complete command of the AFC West, two games ahead of the 8-4 Chiefs, three ahead of the 7-5 Broncos, who are scrambling just to earn a Wild Card bid. 

The Steelers sit all alone atop the AFC North. The 6-6 Ravens hardly pose a threat. No one has taken them seriously since they handed the Browns their first win of the season back in Week 2.

The 8-4 Falcons hold a one-game lead in the NFC South, but it is hardly safe. The Buccaneers are a threat, and the 6-6 Saints have three divisional games left and some impressive wins on their resume, including an upset of the Broncos.

Yes, most of the records above look wrong. No, I'm not writing this column from dollar draught night yet again. These standings come from Earth Prime, a parallel universe where everything is the same as it is here except for one tiny ripple in the space-time continuum: on Earth Prime, extra points and two-point conversions cannot be returned for scores by the defense.

Up until 2015, that was the rule here, too. A blocked extra point was nothing more than a lost point for the opponent, and an intercepted two-point conversion was no better than an incomplete two-point conversion. But when the NFL provisionally moved extra points to the 15-yard line last year, it also allowed blocked attempts and turnovers on failed conversions to be returned by the defense for two points.

It sounded like an insignificant change at the time. After all, blocked extra points were rare, and two-point conversion attempts weren't all that common. Only one blocked extra point was returned for a score in 2015, early in a December Saints-Panthers game, so there probably weren't many serious discussions about the potential impact on future playoff races when the league made the rule change permanent this year.

John McCusker/Associated Press

But moving the extra point back 13 yards increased both the block rate and the incentive to go for two, also increasing the likelihood of a momentum-changing turnaround after a touchdown. This year's three conversion runbacks all involved playoff contenders and affected the outcomes of the games in which they took place.

• The Ravens were getting clobbered by the Browns in the first quarter in Week 2 when Lawrence Guy blocked an extra point and Tavon Young ran it back for a score. What looked like a 21-0 Browns lead became a 20-2 lead. With the margin narrower, the Ravens were able to play for field goals (as they do best) late in the game and went on to win 25-20.
  
  
• Brandin Cooks scored a game-tying touchdown with 1:22 to play against the Broncos in Week 10. But Willie Parks returned Justin Simmons' blocked extra point up the sideline for a 25-23 Broncos victory. Maybe Parks stepped slightly out-of-bounds, but it wasn't Cleat Week, so the white (as opposed to technicolor) shoes provided inconclusive replay evidence against the white paint of the sideline.
  
  
• You saw what happened on Sunday. The Falcons took a one-point lead late in the fourth quarter. A two-point conversion would have put them up by a field goal. But an Eric Berry interception return (the first-ever NFL pick-two) gave the Chiefs the lead and eventual victory. 

It's only after you zoom out and look at the whole playoff chase that the impact of these three plays becomes apparent. The AFC West and NFC South would look different if runbacks did not count. Our perceptions of teams like the Ravens, Falcons and Broncos would be different. The ripples would be felt across all the postseason hopefuls. Imagine what it would mean for the Dolphins, Bills, and AFC Southies if the Chiefs and Broncos were closer to the pack and the Ravens were deep in the chase group.

Saints and Falcons fans may hate the two-point return rule after their heartbreaking losses; Browns fans have other things to be depressed about. But the rule is doing exactly what the NFL hoped it would do: add excitement to the play after the touchdown. And c'mon, anything that gives Eric Berry another chance to be a hero is good for the NFL.

The two-point runback may remain pretty rare, but it's common enough—and occurs at such critical junctures—that coaches need to account for it. As we try to handicap the playoff field, we also need to pay close attention to what the runbacks are trying to tell us:

Gail Burton/Associated Press

Special teams matter. The Ravens are consistently great on special teams every year, so it wasn't shocking or fluky when they got a major momentum shift against a bad opponent from a blocked kick. The Saints always assemble their kicking units on a fixed income because of their cap problems, so a play like the one that cost them the Broncos game was almost inevitable.

We can extrapolate those lessons to other teams. Matt Prater and the Lions are much less likely to be victims of a blocked extra point down the playoff stretch than the kicking-challenged Buccaneers or Vikings. Of all the things the Colts are likely to screw up at crunch time, an Adam Vinatieri extra point with Pat McAfee holding seems the least likely. And while ghosts of botched extra points past may haunt the Cowboys in the playoffs, Dan Bailey and his kicking unit are now a well-oiled operation.

Goal-line defense matters. A two-point conversion is a goal-line play, so teams with great goal-line defenses have an increased chance to turn a turnover into two points the other way. The Chiefs have one of the NFL's stingiest goal-line defenses and had the Falcons stymied all game inside the 10-yard line. Berry's return was on par with how most of the Chiefs-Falcons game went.

Football Outsiders ranked the Steelers has having the best goal-to-go defense in the NFL entering this week, and they added to their reputation with some stops against the Giants. The Giants are also tough at the goal line, allowing just nine touchdowns on 18 trips. These are teams with an increased likelihood of turning a two-point conversion into a four-point swing.

On the flip side, the Chiefs, Redskins and Vikings have the worst goal-line offenses among playoff contenders according to Football Outsiders. The poor Vikings can't buy a break on the point after, as they learned against the Cowboys. The Packers, with their running-back-by-committee-of-converted-receivers approach, rank 26th in goal-line offense. If the NFC North comes down to what happens after touchdowns, the Lions will keep pulling away.

Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

Game-planning for the runback might be worth it. Say you are Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak or Mike Zimmer. The opponent just took a one-point lead late in the game and is about to go for two. Do you count on your defensive playmakers to reclaim the lead on a big play or trust your rickety offense to mount a game-winning field-goal drive?

The answer for those coaches is easy: sell out with some gonzo blitz on the two-point attempt, then play for a game-tying field goal if it fails.

Interestingly, the Chiefs did not do this on Sunday. They rushed four defenders, and Berry just jumped the route from his safety position. But the risk-reward differential isn't equal across all conversion attempts, and some teams may find that a calculated risk on a game-changing turnover is worth it in certain situations. Conversely, offenses might choose to run off tackle with a one-point lead if Wade Phillips looks ready to blitz the whole depth chart.

Two-point runbacks are like safeties—not only does the defense score, but it gives the ball right back to the offense. That can be devastating late in the game. Just as both teams account for the safety when the offense is pinned tight, both teams need to account for the turnover potential on a late-game conversion attempt.

Nothing is automatic. The Great Extra Point Blackout of Week 11 reminded us that the 32-yard extra point is not a gimmie. After two winter-weather games on Sunday, coaches need to be aware of the potential that a sure-thing kick could become a three-point catastrophe. Sending a bad kicker or inexperienced snapper/holder onto the field in the snow may not be the best call. Or, if you are the Ravens, it may be a better choice than trusting your offense.

It's all about planning and decision-making. Coaches who prepare for the threat or potential of a runback are much more likely to benefit from one, or less likely to be caught by surprise, than coaches who lapse into strategic autopilot.

Extra tactical wrinkles like these are what make the NFL interesting. If anything, the 32-yard extra point and two-point runback don't go far enough. Over on Earth-2, the next parallel universe over from Earth Prime, the competition committee did what it only talked about doing here on regular Earth, moving two-point conversion attempts to the one-yard line, where the success rate (according to the Football Outsiders database) goes up from 43.6 percent to 52.4 percent. It sounds like a minor difference, but coaches are much more likely to be aggressive when they only need one yard than when they need two.

And man, you should see what Chip Kelly and Tim Tebow are doing to the playoff race on that Earth.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @MikeTanier.