NFL Replacing Pro Bowl With Skills Competition, Flag Football Game

Per Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press, the NFL is ending the Pro Bowl in its current format. 

The league will replace the game — which drew criticism annually for how poor of an on-field product it was with players mostly seeking to avoid injury — with a week-long set of skill competitions. 

The end of the week will still culminate in a game, just a flag football game instead. The NFL is renaming the whole thing to “The Pro Bowl Games.” 

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1574386490909786112

“The Pro Bowl is something that we’ve been looking at for a while, really continuing to evolve,” NFL executive Peter O’Reilly said. “Coming out of last year’s game, we really made the decision based on a lot of internal conversations, getting feedback from GMs and coaches, getting a lot of feedback from players. We think there’s a real opportunity to do something wholly different here and move away from the traditional tackle football game. We decided the goal is to celebrate 88 of the biggest stars in the NFL in a really positive, fun, yet competitive way.”