Quick Thoughts On The Pro Bowl Weekend

Naturally, as a fan of the St. Louis Rams, the Pro Bowl was just a blip on my Sunday radar, not really garnering any excitement. With back-to-back marathons of “Moonshiners” and “Duck Dynasty,” I could hardly bare to flip the channel over to the NFL Network. The Pro Bowl is a waste of a game, something stuffed between the conference championship and the Super Bowl. Still, with football soon to be over, and a long offseason ahead, fans of the NFL will have to soak up whatever they can before “dry season,” myself included Anyways, here are Ramblin’ Fans quick thoughts on the game…

1. I know that the players don’t really play their hardest (or at all) in the Pro Bowl, but it baffles me that any culmination of the “best” players from a conference could given up 62 points. Even worse is the fact that the game was without, arguably, the two best quarterbacks in the NFL; Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. Eli Manning, Matt Schaub, Andrew Luck, and Russell Wilson are the best the NFL can do…

2. With that being said, congratulation to the NFC for showing our clear superiority over the AFC. Your second leading rusher was Matt Schaub…

3. Why do they even invite running backs to the Pro Bowl if they aren’t going to give them any touches. For the AFC, Arian Foster and Jamaal Charles had a combined 6 carries for 10 yards. On the NFC side, Marshawn Lynch, Adrian Peterson, and Doug Martin combined for an astounding 12 carries for 42 yards! Didn’t Peterson average 42 yards per carry this season? Something like that…

4. I hadn’t realized that Larry Fitzgerald made the Pro Bowl as a replacement this season, but was glad to see him get the opportunity to actually play some real football. Kyle Rudolph was also impressive, although he had filled in nicely as the sole receiver in Minnesota after the ill-timed departure of Percy Harvin to the IR.

5. A.J. Green, on the other side of the field, looked like the best wide receiver in football on Sunday. Not that he needs anyone to validate his status among the elite wide receivers, but he truly looks like he is next in line to take the receiving crown from Calvin Johnson at some point in the future.

6. James Laurinaitis, Jo-Lonn Dunbar, and/or Chris Long should have been somewhere on that NFC defense. Not that it needed any help, considering the offense was unstoppable, but it would have been nice to see at least one pair of horns on that field that weren’t purple.

7.  With that said, I truly hope that the NFL either completely revamps the Pro Bowl or trashes it completely. The game that is supposed to honor the “best” players in the sport, essentially, lets in the Top 5 players at each position, in each conference. Yes, this year the best running backs might have been on the field, but where are the quarterbacks, the wide receivers, or even the defensive superstars? Where were Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Calvin Johnson, Brandon Marshall? There was no Patrick Willis, DeMarcus Ware, or any of the other half dozen 49ers’ players that made the original cut. The game is a joke, and is slowly chipping away at the historical meaning of the term “Pro Bowler.” When the exclusivity drains away, the once prestigious title will fade into nothingness. It will be a sad moment for those player hailing from the previous two decades who actually earned the title…