In only the second game of the 2026 UFL season, a new rule was already tested. D.C. Defenders kicker Matt Crane kicked the league's first 4-point field goal. This season, the league is taking a page out of fantasy football scoring systems and implementing a new rule in which field goals of 60 yards or longer are worth 4 points instead of the normal 3.
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DC Defenders' kicker Matt Crane was the first to convert a 60-yard 4-point field goal in the UFL.
The idea is that a longer field goal is much harder to make, and therefore it should be worth more points. OK, well scoring a touchdown from further away is also significantly harder, so why aren't teams awarded with extra points for 50-yard touchdown plays?
I do not like this 4-point field goal rule. I do not like that the rules are codifying an explicit reward for being further away from the goal. In my opinion, this goes against the spirit of the game, in which the goal is supposed to be to drive as close to the goal as possible, and hopefully cross the goal line. Getting more points for being further away from the goal should not, in my opinion, be in the rules.
A counter-argument would be that there are already situations in which teams chose to be further from the end zone in order to get better results. I can think of 2 common examples off the top of my head.
The first is a series of QB kneel downs to run out the clock. A team chooses to take a small loss because, in that situation, the second on the clock are more valuable than a few feet of field position.
Another common example is a team deliberately taking a Delay of Game penalty for a punt on the opponent's side of the 50. This is done to give the punter more room to land the punt inside the 10 yard line without as much risk of putting the ball into the endzone for a touchback.
I don't have a problem with either of these scenarios.
The core difference is that in the examples of the QB kneel and punt, the teams are making a strategic decision to give up short-term field position in exchange for an indirect long-term benefit. These scenarios are not codified in the actual rules. But in the case of the 4-point field goal, it is the rules giving an explicit and immediate reward for losing field position. I could be forgetting some edge case, but I suspect that in most (if not all) examples that you can find of a football team giving up field position in exchange for some benefit, the benefit is not explicitly granted by the rules.
To be more specific, the 4-point field goal rule is more analogous to a touchback rule that says "a punt kicked from the 50 yard line or further that crosses the goal line shall result in a Touchback of only 10 yards instead of 20 yards."
Awkward finishes
I also worry about how this rule might affect the ends of games. I can see a situation in which a team lines up for a 64-yard field goal, down by 4, with a kicker who has proven he has the leg to make it, and so the defense decides to deliberately commit a pre-snap dead-ball penalty (such as Encroachment). This moves the ball up 5 yards, making the kick a 59-yarder instead of a 64-yarder, and reducing the points back down to 3. So now should the offense go ahead and commit a Delay of Game or False Start to move the ball back and get 4 points again? And if so, can the defense then simply commit another penalty? Over and over again, until the refs decide to play King-maker by deeming 1 team or the other as committing a "palpably unfair act".
Also, what if the holder places the ball slightly too close? If the holder sets the tip of the ball down on the 49-yard, 11-inch line, are we going to do an instant replay review to take a point away and give the team only 3 points instead of 4? And what if that costs a team a game?
Conversely, if the line of scrimmage is at the 40 or 41, can the holder simply line up a yard or 2 deeper to put the ball on the 50 yard line?
Thankfully, the 50-yard line runs across the entire field, so it should be easy enough to tell if the ball is short of the 50 yard line or not.
Here's one more fringe hypothetical for you. Say you're down 4 points in the waning seconds of the 4th quarter. It's 4th and long from the opponent's 30 yard line. Your offense has struggled all game and is exhausted. But you have one of the best, biggest-leg kickers in the league. You trust him to nail a 60-yarder for 4 points, more than you trust your offense to convert a 4th and long or to get into the endzone in a single play. It's 4th down, so you can't simply tell your quarterback to run backwards to the 42 yard line and take a knee. That would turn the ball over. You also need to loose more than 10 yards, which means a simple Delay of Game or False Start won't cut it. If you want to loose enough yards to kick this necessary field goal, you need to have your players commit a pre-play personal foul. Something along the lines of Unnecessary Roughness would be necessary, which means one of your players might need to push an opponent or throw a punch. Now we have a potential brawl situation and a hazard to player safety.
I know there's a lot of "ifs" in that hypothetical, but is this the meta that we want the rules to encourage?
Besides, does the UFL really want more games to be decided by long field goal attempts? Multiple times in the last decade or 2, NFL fans have been up in arms for the NFL to change its overtime rules because they hated seeing an offense in overtime make 2 or 3 first downs, and then win the game with a 50 yard field goal without the other offense touching the ball. People hated the idea of talented, big-leg kickers winning games instead of quarterbacks.
This 4-point field goal rule seems like it would create more of that kind of situation. Will fans be up in arms when their team loses a playoff game by their defense making a stop, and then giving up a longer field goal that wins the game instead of tying it?
Counter-proposal: reward accuracy!
Look, I'm all for finding ways to reward kickers for having exceptional skill. I've long been an advocate of kickers and special teams in general. Go ahead and look through my past blogs if you want evidence of that. But I think this 4-point field goal idea is the wrong way to do it.
In my opinion, the better idea would be to reward accuracy instead of length. Instead of awarding more points for a field goal of arbitrary length, how about awarding more points for a more accurate kick? Maybe put a set of narrower uprights on the goal post, and award an extra point for kicking within that smaller target area. Or hang an actual bullseye in the middle of the goal posts and award an extra point if the ball hits it. Or put an additional, single upright dead center of the goal post, and award an extra point if the kick hits that.
I much prefer these solutions, as they reward kickers for exceptional accuracy, regardless of how long the kick is. These ideas do not reward or incentivize teams to deliberately loose field position on the promise of potentially scoring an additional point.
Punt hypocrisy
Besides, if the UFL wants to celebrate kickers and special teams play, then I think it's completely hypocritical to enact this 4-point field goal rule, while also explicitly banning punts from within the 50 yard line. Yes, that's right. Another of the UFL's new rules for 2026 is that teams are prohibited from punting if, at any point during the possession, the ball is put in play on the defender's side of the 50 yard line.
The logic here is that most teams are going for it most of the time in these situations anyway. OK, so leave that decision up to the teams. If a team with a talented punter wants to punt from the opponent's 40 yard line and pin the opponent's offense inside the 5 yard line, then let them. We're supposed to be celebrating and encouraging skillful kicking, right.... Right?
Worse yet, this new punt rule says that even if the offense looses yards and goes back to their side of the 50, they still are not allowed to punt. So if you get the ball to the opponent's 49 yard line, then give up a personal foul or a sack that puts you back on your side of the 50, you are now, by rule required to go for it on 4th and 15, or 4th and 25, or whatever.
This is just one step closer to phasing kicking out of the game entirely.