NFL Pro Bowl Downgraded to Flag Football Game

All striking will live eliminated from the Pro Bowl when it returns to Las Vegas next year. This morning, the NFL announced that it is replacing its one-year all-star tackle football game, which began inward 1951, with a seven-day skills contention culminating inwards a signal flag football game game.

The Pro Bowl returns to Allegiant Stadium for the s yr on Feb. 5, the William Ashley Sunday before Super Bowl LVII.

The convert should amount as no surprise to football game followers. The players have long verbalised their desire to avoid injuries in a game that doesn’t matter toward squad standings or case-by-case player statistics. And, spell beingness elect to spiel in the Pro Bowl remains ane of the highest honors an NFL player can invite — selection for it fifty-fifty figuring into Pro Football Charles Martin Hall of Fame nominations — the Pro Bowl is not taken in earnest past most fans or players. It also draws let down telecasting ratings than most regular-season games.

“I imagine the closing was that the gamy itself doesn’t work,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at the league’s Spring League Meeting, “and that we needed to encounter a different right smart to celebrate our players.”

Planting a Flag

The Pro Bowl already experimented inward recent years with different rules and formats. For leash Pro Bowls origin inward 2014, the NFL derelict the American Football Conference vs. National Football Conference arrange and instead held a fantasy order of payment captained past Pro Football Granville Stanley Hall of Famers. And endure season’s game special tackling and eliminated kickoffs, transforming it into essentially a spirited of two-hand touch.

Flag football game is already a key portion of the NFL’s world-wide expansion. The conference partnered with the International Federation of American Football to land flag football to The World Games inwards July, with an eyeball on the 2028 Olympics inward Los Angeles.

The seven-day skills contention will assure 88 of the cover AFC and NFC players showcasing their football game and non-football skills inward various challenges. The event will follow coproduced by the NFL with 14-time Pro Bowl participant Peyton Manning and his Omaha Productions company, and Manning will also follow a private instructor inwards the flagstone game.

“Making Sunday’s spunky a signal flag football game is outstanding to see,” 14-time Pro Bowl participant Peyton Manning told the Associated Press.

“Youth football game has been super important to me, and learned NFL Flag will help develop this sport, i hope boys and girls put up ensure themselves playing the same gritty as the topper players inward the world,” Manning said.

Some Pro Bowl Traditions Continue

The Pro Bowl will stock-still live played post-season, despite calls for it to live held mid-season — when most major Second Earl of Guilford American sports leagues schedule their all-star games. And devotee voting testament relieve facilitate influence the AFC and NFC team rosters. (Tom Mathew B. Brady has the to the highest degree invitations to the Pro Bowl with 15, spell foursome players received 14, including Manning.)

The Pro Bowl debuted inward Jan 1951 in L.A., where it stayed for 21 seasons before moving to different cities from 1972-80. Hawaii Island hosted the spirited from 1980-2009, before it skipped around from Miami to Phoenix, Orlando and, earliest this year, Las Vegas.

Sin City had also been circle to boniface the 2021 Pro Bowl. But that was canceled because of COVID-19 restrictions.