Washington safety Sean Taylor created a legendary highlight in 2007 when he leveled a bone-crushing hit against Buffalo punter Brian Moorman during the Pro Bowl.
There will be no such hit in San Francisco on Tuesday night, as a handful of players trade their pads for flags for the Pro Bowl Games — a modernized version of the event that’s anchored by a seven-on-seven flag football showcase.
The NFL Pro Bowl is suffering a slow death. The league’s once-beloved All-Star game has been shuffled from sold-out stadiums in vacation destinations to a convention center on the Tuesday before the Super Bowl.
League officials have no plans to take the maligned event out of its misery.
NFL leadership abandoned the old format — which saw players suit up for a low-intensity tackle football game — in 2023. Now, the league’s best will play flag football in a 4,000-seat convention center.
“We’ve spent a lot of time evolving our Pro Bowl, talking about how to make our Pro Bowl more attractive, both for our players participating but also our fans,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in October.
The league has struggled for years to make fans and players care about the Pro Bowl.
Unlike the All-Star events for the other three major North American leagues, the NFL’s showcase is stuck at the end of the year. Many players are recovering from the wear and tear of a long season. When the event was held in Hawai’i or Orlando, Florida, many Pro Bowlers could take their families with them for an end-of-season vacation.
San Francisco doesn’t offer the same appeal.
At least seven players have opted out of this year’s event, including Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Meanwhile, more and more fans are tuning out the festivities. Last year’s Pro Bowl drew just 4.7 million viewers through a simulcast on ABC, ESPN and Disney XD. The event has seen viewership decline in each of the last three years, including an 18% drop last season.
“We spent a great deal of time talking about the objectives, and the objectives really are to celebrate and honor our incredible players, and second is to use our game as a global platform,” Mr. Goodell said in October.
Whether the NFL celebrates its best players at the Pro Bowl is also an open discussion. Players from the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots — the two Super Bowl clubs — won’t attend the Pro Bowl as they prepare for their season finale. The league had to find eight replacements for them.
The selection process was widely maligned when the NFL confirmed that Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders would replace New England’s Drake Maye in the Pro Bowl.
Sanders’ 68.1 passer rating ranked second-to-last in the league among quarterbacks with at least two starts, only ahead of New York Jets undrafted rookie Brady Cook.
Joe Flacco, who the Browns benched before trading him to the Cincinnati Bengals, will join Sanders on the Pro Bowl roster despite spending most of the season as a backup.
“The Pro Bowl used to be a badge of honor and respected,” former Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman wrote on X. “Things have changed.”
“No hate but the Pro Bowl a joke lol,” New York Giants tackle Jermaine Eluemenor wrote on social media. “If you’re popular, you get in. Laughable at this point.”
But the NFL isn’t solely concerned with reactions from die-hard fans or its players. The Pro Bowl has a new responsibility — as a nationally televised showcase for flag football.
The league is devoting countless resources to football’s non-contact cousin ahead of its debut at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Team owners have already approved a proposal that allows active players to represent their home nation at the Games.
The NFL is the dominant force in American sports. Its broadcasts dominate the TV ratings list each year. The league has effectively stolen Christmas, a holiday once associated with the NBA, even when the occasion falls in the middle of the week.
The league’s new aims are global. Over the past five years, NFL officials have openly expressed their desire to spread football across the world. The league established a new Global Markets Program for its clubs and has steadily increased the number of international regular-season games.
Landing football in the Olympics — the biggest sports stage in the world — was the next step in the NFL’s quest for international exposure.
“We’ve got to make the game matter,” Damani Leech, then the chief operating officer of NFL International, told CNBC in 2022. “If flag football becomes an Olympic sport, more countries will invest in playing that sport.”
Less than a year later, the NFL announced that the Pro Bowl would become a flag football event.
Pro Bowl viewership may be subpar compared to the NFL’s usual standards. But it’s the most-watched flag football game in the world.
While the league builds momentum for the Los Angeles Olympics, the Pro Bowl Games will continue to act as a flag football exhibition, whether NFL obsessives like it or not.
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.