The NFL has the worst all-star game in major sports. No one cares about the Pro Bowl.
Each winter, the NFL sends 88 representatives — some worthy, others Evan Engram types along for the ride — to a warm-weather stadium for an exhibition showdown designed to take up space during the Super Bowl bye week. This is a better decision than running the game in the middle of February after everyone has finished caring about football for the season, but still generally a bad idea.
The Pro Bowl sets a stage for disinterested players to go through the motions, collect a check, earn an all-star jersey to hang on their wall, and then hopefully leave town with a few good stories.
There isn’t much excitement in watching the players you like go 80 percent out there. But there is a way to fix it. Three years ago Jason Garrett, of all people, struck gold:
JASON GARRETT PUT ALVIN KAMARA AND SAQUON BARKLEY IN AS PASS RUSHERS ON FOURTH DOWN AND IT WORKED pic.twitter.com/u47gwJ9v3E
— Christian D'Andrea, 2021 PAC champion (@TrainIsland) January 27, 2019
Garrett, fully understanding the nonsense unfolding around him, let his offensive players play defense. Not in a Deion Sanders “he’s a cornerback AND a wide receiver” kind of way. He took the NFC’s two best running backs, saw they wanted to take some reps, and inserted them at edge rusher.
And it ruled.
There’s no reason to stop there. And thus, here is my modest Pro Bowl proposal.
Randomize the positions. Fill out depth charts by virtue of drawing names out of a hat. Institute a rule all quarterbacks must weigh at least 300 pounds. Have all the kicking done by players who are not kickers. No one gets to play the position they were voted into the game to fill.
Now we’ve got an exhibition worth watching. Imagine Kenny Clark taking a snap from Deebo Samuel, dropping back and delivering a dime to Shaq Barrett, only for it to be picked off by lockdown cornerback Justin Tucker. After the ensuing AFC drive sputters out following handoffs to TJ Watt and Colts long snapper Luke Rhodes, head coach Mike Vrabel calls on placekicker Patrick Ricard to plant a 34-yard field goal attempt squarely into his long snapper’s — in this case, Derwin James — back.
Would it be a bummer missing out on a chance to see Jonathan Taylor and Nick Chubb take a few more handoffs? Sure, but we get that all season. How often do we get to see an offensive lineman take a screen pass and rumble to the end zone? Robert Hunt did that back in November and it was one of the greatest things about 2021 even though it didn’t count.
i don't care if he's not eligible, this counts for 12 points pic.twitter.com/iad8VzInyo
— Christian D'Andrea, 2021 PAC champion (@TrainIsland) November 12, 2021
The argument against position randomization is that the result wouldn’t really be NFL football. Which, of course, is the purest four-word distillation of the Pro Bowl to begin with: not really NFL football.
This isn’t about adding NBA Jam hot spots or a CFL-style rouge or a target on the top of the goal posts Patrick Mahomes gets one point for each time he hits it from midfield (…wait, that’s not bad). It’s football, played in the spirit of joyous high school blowouts where the head coach comes back to the sideline and asks who wants to play tight end this series.
(Additionally, the hilarity of sportsbooks trying to set lines for a Myles Garrett-Tristan Wirfs quarterback battle could be the funniest thing the NFL’s ever done. Up there with the NFL100 Super Bowl ad or giving Jacksonville a franchise.)
No one cares about the Pro Bowl because it’s bad football played by great players. Let’s make it bad football cultivated under the watchful eye of great athletes playing woefully out of position. Let’s steal one of the few redeeming qualities of awful baseball games — outfielders taking the mound — and apply it to the sport that supplanted baseball as America’s pastime.
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The Pro Bowl isn’t supposed to be good or pure. The only conditions it has to meet are:
a) star players
b) football
You can easily get that done with a pass rush of wide receivers and punters closing in on a defensive tackle-turned-quarterback. I don’t want to watch Kirk Cousins throw checkdowns to James Conner. I want to see Kirk Cousins try and tackle a 260-pound tailback or snap a ball to his punter.
It’s too late to make this a formal addition in 2022, but Matt LaFleur and Mike Vrabel, hear my plea. If one of your linemen wants to play quarterback, let him. If your kicker and safety want to trade positions, do it. Give us something to root for in the Pro Bowl besides preseason-caliber football.
