Fans, players and coaches will still pick Pro Bowlers, but various factors led the league to a decision that focuses more “on the honor” of being picked.
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The National Football League announced Wednesday that it will eliminate the annual Pro Bowl, making it the first major sport to drop its all-star game. Fans, players and coaches will still elect 88 Pro Bowlers, who will be invited to an event in Los Angeles in February, but they will not play a game.
“Ultimately, the Pro Bowl, at its core, is about honoring the best of the best in that season, on the field, in real games,” Peter O’Reilly, NFL executive vice president of club business, international and league events, told the Athletic, which first reported the change. “And the shift here is about shifting the focus from the game — which is ultimately where people’s attention goes, especially the replacement players tied to it — to the honor.”
Indeed, one of the issues that has plagued the event were the alternates who were named when the first choices pulled out. From 2016 to 2020, the Athletic reported, rosters featured an average of 35 replacement players. That helped lead to the major problem with the Pro Bowl: The game itself was usually terrible.
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The league tinkered with the format over the years, switching dates and locations and finally experimenting with flag football starting in 2022. But the players did not want to get hurt, so they did not play particularly hard, and fans did not want to watch players jog around the field. Eventually, the league tired of trying to force them.
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