John Froschauer / AP

Dallas' Tony Romo bobbles the snap in front of kicker Martin Gramatica. Footballs called K-Balls are used for special teams play — though teams dislike using them.

In Week 16, Cincinnati lost to Denver 24-23 on a snowy day when Brad St. Louis’ snap on an extra point in the final minute sailed wide of holder Kyle Larson, preventing Shayne Graham from even attempting his 159th straight conversion.

“The K-Balls are not good balls for performing football duties — catching, holding, kicking, punting,” New Orleans Saints kicker John Carney said. “Nobody really likes the K-Balls. The kickers somehow, the punters somehow, were punished when they came up with this K-Ball rule.”

Akers said the league uses K-Balls to cut down on touchbacks and increase scoring. In 1998, Mitch Berger had a record 40 touchbacks on kickoffs for Minnesota. He had just 13 the next season using the K-Balls.

“They want to see returns,” Akers said.

Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren was on the competition committee when it came up with the K-Balls. He doesn’t see a reason for all the fuss.

“Teams would do all sorts of weird stuff with them,” he said. “It was common knowledge it was bad. So the competition committee said, ’Let’s clean that up.’

“The kicking balls, it’s like they’re coming in a Brinks truck. It’s the darndest thing you’ve ever seen. And they’re guarded. Now the kickers complained, but statistically nothing changed too much. We evaluate that. At least we knew it wasn’t going to be filled with helium.”

It wasn’t until this season that actual game balls were allowed to be used during practices so visiting teams can have an opportunity to prepare their share.

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“They went to the extreme,” he said. “That’s not the answer because now you are playing with a ball that’s slick and not a good ball to play with. I think there’s a happy medium there somewhere.”

Not everyone cares about the difference between the games balls and K-Balls.

“It is what it is,” said Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri, one of the best clutch kickers in NFL history. “It really doesn’t matter because everyone has to play with the same ball. The other balls, they get to work them in and the K-balls, you can’t. Would it be nice to be able to work them in? Sure. But the officials keep them and that’s just the way it is, so you have to deal with it.”

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