What started out as a nice little post about the success rate of NFL teams going for 2-point conversions turned into a marathon Google search that yielded only the opportunity to do our own research. It was pretty surprising to find out that with the large number of NFL web sites and interest out there, we could not find a simple thing like the number of 2-point attempts this year. In any event, we finally did find a team-by-team breakdown of the number of 2-pointers made (30) this season, which was up from 21 a year ago. From there, we went team-by-team and found the number of touchdowns scored by each team, subtracted the number of extra points attempted and found the possible number of two-point tries they would have had. Then we went through every game of the season to see how many ended on an overtime TD, thus resulting in a TD with no extra point try (there were four such games, one victory each for Green Bay, San Diego, Miami and San Francisco). That fancy math brings us to the hopeful conclusion that there were 30 successful 2-point tries in 59 2-point attempts, roughly just a little better than 50 percent (thought we’re not entirely sure if a botched snap or bad hold in which there is no kick attempted counts as a missed kick or a failed 2-point try. If it’s the latter, the 2-point success rate in cases of actual attempts would likely go up a little). Considering there were 13 extra points missed all season, the success rate on those tries was about 98 or 99 percent. So it’s a virtual cinch for 1 point, and a half-and-half proposition for two. A wash, right? Well, hold on. Your Minnesota Vikings were 3-for-3, including a pair in the fourth quarter of the season finale yesterday (both on T-Jack runs). We’d like to go on record as saying that if a team has a mobile quarterback, putting in a five-receiver set for one play from the two-yard line and running a QB draw or some sort of run-pass option will work more than 50 percent of the time and going for 2 should therefore become the standard, not the exception, for such teams. Your thoughts? (That Paris Hilton stamp has nothing to do with anything, obviously).

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