I have a penchant for the unusual and missed extra points and safeties definitely fill the bill. Among the possible ways to score in American football – touchdown + conversion, field goal, safety – safeties are far and away the least frequent. Extra points, by themselves, are not so infrequent, but since they are equivalent to short field goals, attempted from the middle of the field, they are high-percentage kicks and misses are uncommon (especially with the specialization of kicking over the last 50 years).
One time, though, I began to wonder just how infrequent these kinds of plays actually were. Out of this curiosity came the project you see here. Although it would be interesting to track them across various levels and football leagues, I have tried to limit the time sink involved with this hobby, so I follow them just for the 16 (or fewer) games per week in the National Football League (NFL).
My window of intense data collection on this subject thus far ranges from the 2006 season to 2008 season, so the picture I can give is somewhat limited. Yet, some data is better than no data. So, without further ado, the pages on missed extra points and safeties:
The statistics and other information provided at NFL.com and Pro-Football-Reference.com were instrumental in helping to compile these pages.