NFL: Two Ideas To Fix The Pro Bowl

The NFL Pro Bowl could be improved by changing the game to a flag football tournament and adding a skills challenge.

The NFL announced two major changes to the Pro Bowl on Wednesday, although they weren’t the kind of changes that many fans were hoping for.
The game will be played in Orlando instead of Hawai’i in 2017 and beyond, and the old AFC v. NFC format will return, replacing the fantasy draft format the game implemented since 2014.

These changes seem unlikely to increase interest in a game that has been frankly very uninteresting for several years, especially since the infamous 2012 game in which players were barely doing anything to engage each other and 100 points were scored.

Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily reported that the Pro Bowl drew only a 5.0 overnight rating on ESPN in 2016, down from 5.6 in 2015 and 6.7 in 2014, when it aired on NBC. Granted, those are still decent numbers, but interest in the Pro Bowl is clearly in sharp decline, and if the numbers dip too far, it might simply not be worth the NFL’s investment.

So, in lieu of scrapping the Pro Bowl altogether, is there anything the NFL can do to make the Pro Bowl engaging? We have proven that we will watch football if it’s on. The Hall of Fame game got a 6.9 rating when it aired last season. Football is inherently interesting, and we love to watch it. There is definitely a market for a football game which features some of the best players in the game during the two-week Super Bowl coverage deluge.

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So why isn’t the Pro Bowl engaging? Simply, the game isn’t good. Many of the game’s top players turn down their invitations. Players are moving at half-speed to avoid getting hurt. Teams aren’t allowed to really play defense due to restrictions on formations and blitzing. No one really gets tackled and quarterbacks have all day to throw. It doesn’t really look like football.

Obviously, player safety is a concern because football is inherently dangerous. Tyler Eifert of the Bengals might miss time during the regular season with an ankle injury he sustained during the last Pro Bowl. How can the league host an interesting all-star game without risking injury to players?

I think the answer might be found in two ideas, including one that many have derisively suggested: put flags on them.

What if the NFL turned the Pro Bowl into an eight-team single elimination flag football tournament, one team representing each division, with seven players playing both offense and defense (except for the quarterbacks) and a decent cash incentive for players to compete? It minimizes the player safety issue as much as possible without making the players play overcautiously, it changes the format enough to give the event a bit of a spark and it would still be recognizable as a football game. It’s basically what the NHL did for their All-Star Game last year, which was a rousing success.

The second thing the NFL might do to generate interest in the Pro Bowl: bring back the skills challenge. Again, this is something the NHL All-Star Game did last year and it was extremely successful. If the NFL hosted its own Olympics-style skills competition over the weekend leading up to the Pro Bowl and broadcast it on NFL Network, I think fans would tune in. Would fans watch their favorite receivers run the gauntlet to prove they had the best hands or square off in a 40-yard dash to determine the NFL’s fastest man like they did in 2007 and before?

Every other major American sports league does something like this as part of their All-Star week activities, and fans love them almost as much, if not more than, the games themselves. They are relatively safe activities that wouldn’t incur a large injury risk, and they would also provide a welcome break in endless Super Bowl coverage and re-coverage during the long two weeks after the conference championship games.

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Obviously, these are just ideas, and the odds of the NFL implementing them seem pretty small, but maybe, if the Pro Bowl’s ratings and revenue continue to drop, the NFL might decide that a radical change is needed and they’ll try something new for the Pro Bowl.