What’s next for the NFL Pro Bowl Games as prestige wears off?
The Pro Bowl games were once a prestigious honor that recognized only the NFL’s greatest talent but as time’s gone on, it’s become a bit of a joke.
The NFL has just concluded the 2025 Pro Bowl Games, the league’s third edition of the new format introduced in 2022. Already, the once prestigious game was starting to decline and the league redesigned it, moving from a tackle football game to a series of skills challenges and a flag football game.
Unfortunately, that change only seemed to make the event even less respectable. In the past and for several years, the Pro Bowl featured the league’s top tier talent from the AFC and NFC conferences competing against each other at a high level. It was an honor to be selected and participating in it would carry great meaning for a player.
Nowadays, as the Pro Bowl features grade school field-day-type events like dodgeball, tug-of-war, and even video games, more and more players are choosing not to participate at all. For them, it’s not worth risking an injury to play in these silly carnival games.
Pro Bowl Games losing credibility
This year, 25 of the 88 players were replacements. Fair enough, 11 of those were replacements for the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles selections, who couldn’t participate on account of them heading to Super Bowl LIX the following week.
Several other players decided not to participate, however, citing injuries or potential injuries, and simply the desire for rest after a long season, as the main justification. And while that does make sense, when that much star power is missing, the event really loses its integrity.
When you get 5 alternates deep, just call it the Participation Bowl.
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) January 28, 2025
Some of the players missing this year included MVP candidates Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Those two, for example, were replaced by Russell Wilson and Drake Maye. The talent is simply not the same - even Aidan O’Connell, Kirk Cousins, Justin Herbert, and Joe Flacco were ranked above Maye and Wilson in expected points added (EPA) per dropback in the 2024 season.
if these numbers get u into the pro bowl please remove this event https://t.co/bYad2Pobsc pic.twitter.com/JYVPMQY6QW
— AK 🏝️ (@aklilayyyyyy) January 28, 2025
Unlike regular voting, the voting for alternates is done by the players themselves. This unfortunately can result in popularity winning over talent.
Will we see a change in the Pro Bowl in the future?
Considering the NFL still earns a lot of money from the Pro Bowl, and the players who do participate seem to enjoy themselves, I doubt very much that the Pro Bowl will go away completely - at least not any time soon.
However, considering that it’s becoming less serious, but is still one of the honors taken into account for a player to make it into the Hall of Fame, it would be nice if the league recognized if a player was selected to the Pro Bowl as a starter, or rather as an alternate or backup.
On Pro Bowls, one thing I'd love for @pfref to do is differentiate between Pro Bowl seasons: starter, backup, alternate, named as replacement, etc
— Mike Sando (@SandoNFL) January 2, 2025
Would love to see the 10x Pro Bowlers who actually were voted to the team 2 times (if that were the case).
This stuff gets used in…
One possible solution to keep the Pro Bowl an honor would be to hold a ceremony in place of the event. Rather than show off players’ skills during the event, the players selected could just show up to an awards show to be recognized for their talent and hard work. In fact, the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement has a clause about that very idea:
NFL CBA Article 38, Section 6 (b)
“In any League Year, the NFL may elect, in its sole discretion, not to hold a Pro Bowl game. In such a case, the NFL shall replace the Pro Bowl game with another event (e.g., without limitation, an honors ceremony or NFL press release) that recognizes the accomplishments of outstanding NFL players, provided that the NFL will consult with the NFLPA prior to making its determination.”
In the future, if the NFL keeps the games, which it’s likely to do (for both exposure and money generation), they might consider moving the location back to Hawaii to offer more incentive to players. But as long as players are still skipping out on what is supposed to be a great honor just to get some rest, the honor itself needs to be distinguished in some way beyond its current form.
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