Nfl Reportedly Eliminating Pro Bowl Event, Prioritizing Individual Performance Award Without Alternates

The NFL’s Pro Bowl has gone extinct, according to a Wednesday report from The Athletic’s Jonathan Jones, who reported that the league is leaving the all-star competition in the past and prioritizing the Pro Bowl honor as an individual performance award without alternates.

League executives reportedly presented the future of the Pro Bowl to team owners on Wednesday. Without a standalone game or event to field, 88 players will receive Pro Bowl status every season.

“… 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.

“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.”

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In recent years, as the Pro Bowl experimented with different formats, including a flag football game that offered a bit more intensity but also an array of confusing rules, opt-outs increased. That left the league scrambling to fill spots with less qualified players who absorbed a Pro Bowl designation nonetheless. For instance, this past season, a pair of quarterbacks who started for a 5-12 Cleveland Browns team — Joe Flacco and Shedeur Sanders — were recognized as Pro Bowlers, even though they were replacements for the game of flag.

They wound up helping the AFC build a big lead in a contest the NFC roared back to win 66-52 on a Tuesday night in San Francisco leading up to Super Bowl LX.

While flag and the other games the NFL has rolled out for the Pro Bowl have infused some fun into two-week hiatus ahead of the big game, the surge in alternates stripped the Pro Bowl of its prestige and practically rendered any healthy discourse about snubs obsolete.

The NFL is now reportedly trying to renew the significance of being a Pro Bowler by solely emphasizing the accolade.

This story is being updated.