The 32 teams are near unanimous in believing the point after touchdown needs to change. Precisely how is another story. The details of a compromise that goes to vote in May. Plus why the Saints own the draft, and eight coaches on the spot

We’re exactly one month out from round one of the NFL draft. There’s a lot to cover this week, including:

Ten questions for eight coaches at the league meetings, which just concluded in Arizona
Pete Carroll tells me he is not tortured. (Didn’t think he was)
Suddenly, the Saints—who are not finished making over their team—own the 2015 draft
The Browns have plenty of draft ammo—that is, unless the NFL takes some of it to smite GM Ray Farmer
Just what parity needs: the Patriots with three prime selections in a six-pick span
NFL draft wise guy: “This year, the 20th pick is the same as the 50th pick to me”
Why April 17-18 is very important to this draft
Nine prospects have separated themselves
And a cool draft wrinkle the fans in Chicago will like
But first, the biggest change to NFL scoring in the 95-year history of the league is coming. If you don’t like it, get out of the way.

Post-touchdown could feature three new ways of scoring.

Last year, in a general session at an NFL meeting, the league’s 32 teams agreed—almost unanimously—that the point after touchdown was passé. Had to go. Too automatic. And so eight days ago, when the competition committee gathered in Phoenix to go over potential rule changes for the 2015 season, the committee was stuck on the PAT fix. There was nothing the group thought it could sell that would get the required 24 votes from the teams. (A rule change needs a three-quarter vote to pass.) Find a compromise, the committee was told; the league can’t go another year with 99.6 percent extra-point efficiency—the league average for the past three years.

So on Tuesday, each team had a chance to express opinions on what the new rule should be. Thirty of 32 teams said they wanted the PAT to change, as teams, one by one, had a chance to advance their own solutions. But the opinions on what the new rule should be “were all over the map,” one competition committee member told me in Phoenix. “That’s the problem now. No one can agree, and now we have to come up with a compromise that’ll get 24 votes in May.”
This is the most likely compromise to be advanced, and the most likely way the league will amend how teams can score after a touchdown:

Teams will have a choice whether to go for one or two points after a touchdown, from different distances.
If the offensive team chooses to kick for one point, the scrimmage line will move from the 2-yard-line to the 15-yard line, making it a 32- or 33-yard attempt.
If the offensive team chooses to go for two points, the scrimmage line will be either the 1-and-a half- or 2-yard line. There was much debate about making it the 1, the 1-and-a-half or the 2. The feeling about putting it on the 1 was that it could turn into too much of a scrum/push-the-pile play, or a fluky puncture-the-goal-line-with-the-ball-and-bring-it-back play by the quarterback. Putting it at the 1-and-a-half or leaving it at the 2 would increase the chances of a real football play with some drama.
The defensive team would be able to score two points by either blocking the PAT and returning it downfield to the end zone, or by intercepting the two-point attempt and running it back, or recovering a fumble on the two-point play and returning it all the way.
Again, that’s not certain. Anytime you ask 24 teams to agree on anything, there’s a chance it won’t happen. But if 30 of 32 teams agree that the PAT is broken, there’s a good chance they’d agree to change some form of the rule. And what I’ve laid out is the most likely scenario to be passed in May, during the next league meeting.

There always will be those who don’t want the scoring system to change, because of tradition, or the attitude that football’s not broken, so why fix it? But the PAT is broken. The current system of scoring was invented by the lords of college football in 1912—six points for a touchdown, one for an extra point, two for a safety, three for a field goal—with the two-point conversion added by the NFL in 1994. Now the PAT cries out to be fixed. It’s simply not a competitive play anymore. Fifteen teams have not missed a PAT this decade. Tennessee hasn’t missed one since 2005, Kansas City and San Francisco since 2006. The Patriots and Broncos, combined, are 436 for 436 since 2011. Doing nothing would be the mistake.