While watching the Penn Mutual Rugby championships on NBC (the finals are tomorrow afternoon, btw), and explaining to my children how the try and conversion (extra point equivalent) work, and it dawned on my seventeen year old and I that it might be the solution the NFL is looking for...
Wherever the touchdown is scored in the end zone, the extra point must be attempted from a place perpendicular from the physical point where the touchdown is scored.
I think you'll need to restrict it to between the numbers, because kicking from the physical sideline has inherent issues. Also, you can debate about the concept of how far back from the 2 you can go (I think not at all, but I'm open to that conversation), and to what constitutes the "point where the touchdown is scored" - certainly where a runner crosses the goal line, but when a receiver catches the ball on the back or side line, are we counting the spot where his feet first touched down? But the NFL Rules folks are good at those sorts of details; that shouldn't be a deterrent.
But that would not only make the extra point interesting again, it would make the preceding touchdown more intriguing! Do you stick with the fade route to your 6'6" wide out, knowing where you're going to have to kick the point from? Does it increase the importance of the running game - especially the goal-line fullback? It leaves open the possibility of the faked two-point conversion, or simply the choice to go for two when you're on the numbers. It goes against the NFL's moving everything inwards, shrinking the hashmarks to the point where they're probably going to replace the two current hashes with one right down the middle of the field! But the more I think about this, the more reasonable it seems to me! It increases the reliance on good kickers, unlike most of the trendy thoughts on simply eliminating the kick altogether. And it's just as do-able at the college or high school level - What's not to like?
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