Adam Vinatieri hasn’t missed an extra point in the last five seasons in real games, but he missed two PATs in last night’s Pro Bowl exhibition game in Phoenix.

Why?

Because the NFL would like to ram a few rule changes down the throats of the players and the fans alike. And last night’s charade of a football game gave the NFL an opportunity to give some of their “new” rules a tryout.

Vinatieri missed the two PATs because the NFL shrunk the goalposts from 18-feet wide to 14-feet wide – plus the extra points were pushed back to the 25-yard line – making them, in essence, 35-yard field goals aimed at a smaller target.

“Anytime you make our job more difficult,” Vinatieri said after the game, “no kicker is going to be happy with that. Ask a receiver if they should take their gloves off because they catch the ball too well, nobody is going to be overly happy about that. I understand that the wheels of change are in motion and people want to change stuff, but I feel bad for the young bucks that will have to deal with that their whole career.”

PATs weren’t the only kicking aspects of the game that were changed.

No kickoffs – If you watched the masquerade last night – which I did not – you didn’t see any kickoffs. That’s because the NFL would love to remove kickoffs from the game. The NFL – now extremely gun-shy about the potential for future lawsuits resulting from player injuries – is under the impression that kickoffs are the most-violent aspect of the game and therefore cause the most head-injuries.

More timeouts – Last night, the teams each got two timeouts per quarter – which increased the game totals from six to eight per team. As a fan, I neither need nor want any more timeouts. Methinks it’s an NFL ploy to increase advertising revenues.

More two-minute warnings – Last night, there were a two-minute warnings at the end of each quarter – upping the two-minute warnings in the game from two to four. The NFL’s rationale is that the team with the ball will employ the two-minute drill at the end of each quarter – thus increasing the opportunity for more scoring.

Change of possessions – The reason for the two-minute warnings at the end of the first and third quarters is because the team with the ball at the end of the quarter forfeits possession of the ball at the beginning of the next quarters. If they don’t score, they turn the ball over to the other team at their opponent’s 25-yard line.

Timing of the game – A 35-second play-clock was used instead of the 40-second play-clock. And there were several quirks of the clock inside those two-minute warnings that I don’t care enough about to waste my time, or your time, with them.

This is another perfect example of the NFL again trying to fix something that ain’t broke.

Barry Bowe is the author of 12 Best Eagles QBs.