Should I kick the extra point or aim for two points?

When a team is trailing by seven points late in a game, the conversation quickly turns to whether they’ll win by two points or score a touchdown.

Tampa Bay, New England and Seattle all opted against it in Week 9 and were overtime losers.

Things weren’t quite the same, with the Seahawks scoring with 51 seconds left, the Patriots with an exhausted Drake Maye on their last play, and the Buccaneers with 27 seconds left and Patrick Mahomes on the other end. But the decision and the result were the same.

Were they necessarily bad decisions?

The data shows that probably not, and teams that choose to kick extra points in the final moments of regulation have historically had a slightly higher winning percentage than teams that go for two points.

Teams looking to earn extra points have a 37-49-2 (.432) record in that scenario, even after losing three games this week, according to numbers tracked by Sportradar dating back to 2000.

This included 2 losses when the kicker missed the extra point, 10 losses when the opposing team scored before the end of regulation, and 6 wins when the team regained the ball and scored. The game is all about turnovers.

Teams with two-point tries had a record of 10-15 (.400) and made 12 of their two-point attempts.

However, two of those shots resulted in points conceded when the opposing team attempted late field goals. In the 2019 game, the Bears gave up a go-ahead two-point try to Denver on the way to kicking the basket, then got a fourth down. A field goal that wins the game.

Complicating this year’s decision is that each team is scoring two-point tries at a record low rate.

From 2010 to 2023, scoring two-point tries was essentially a coin toss, with teams converting 48.7% of their tries. That dropped to 32.4% in the first half of this season.