It will be interested to see if coaches will go for two points more often. Teams have successfully kicked a field goal on 95.2% of the attempts from 30-35 yards last season while only scoring on 48.3% of the two point conversions. With the rule change the expected points value is now higher going for it at 0.966 on two point conversions comparred to kicking the extra point.
Initially, I would expect a 1.4% edge in going for 2 will alter league strategy only at the margins...a team who's kicker is in a slump or a game with high cross winds.
As an FYI, Crosby's career FG make % from 32 and 33 yards is 90.5% on 19 of 21, though I wouldn't make too much out of that. It's a fairly small sample; one fewer miss over 8 years puts him 95.2%, in line with the league average for this average kicker.
http://espn.go.com/blog/green-bay-packers/post/_/id/20621/pat-rule-change-shouldnt-impact-packers
If we look at the history of rule changes intended to minimize the importance of FGs by putting more of a penalty into misses, it took decades before teams changed their approaches.
In 1974, the goal posts were moved from the goal line to the end line, and missed FGs outside the 20 were placed at the line of scrimmage on the change of possession. In 1994, the rule was changed to place the ball at the spot of the kick on change of possession outside the 20.
Throughout this period, FG importance was not diminished. The significant improvement in place kicking state-of-the-art overwhelmed the rule changes.
It's only been in recent years that going for it on 4th. and short at the opponent's 35, for example, has been recognized as having the statistical edge, and is now fairly common in a variety of game situations.
The league will likely give the new rules a few years to evaluate the affect. I would expect they'll tweek them again in a few years.
Philly, I believe it was, proposed the 2 point attempt be placed at the 1 yard line. That would be a lot more interesting. Eliminating the PAT kick altogether would be even more interesting, but incremental changes are the way of the world in the NFL.
