A list of Pro Bowl-saving ideas the day after

Cody Eding | February 1, 2010 | View Comments |

Anyone who could not watch the NFL’s Pro Bowl Sunday night can rest assured they did not miss much. At my apartment, the spectacle was turned off just about quickly as it was turned on.

The game was obviously a 50 percent walkthrough. Quarterbacks strolled around untouched, defenders bit on everything and the tackles were fit for a pillow fight.

The NFL has a laundry list of things to change if they are committed to making its all-star game relevant again.

1) Move the game back to Hawaii

I’m sure some football fans will not want to make the trip out into the Pacific Ocean. But, the league must remember the game is as much about the players as it is the fans. Every player just survived a brutal 16-game season and some participated in the playoffs. Let the game be a vacation for them as much as it is another game.

2) Move the game back behind the Super Bowl

A no-brainer here. The Pro Bowl showcases the best players from around the league. It only makes sense that quite a few of the best players come from the best teams. In other words, Drew Brees and Peyton Manning should be in the Pro Bowl. David Garrard and the like should not.

3) Get the game off of ESPN

This is not a complaint about ESPN’s broadcast at all, but a knock on the state of telecommunications in the United States. While major metropolitan areas are blessed with affordable cable, many households in the country do not have access to cable and cannot afford satellite television. If NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to reach the broadest audience possible, he needs to move the game back to over-the-air television.

4) Institute a standardized playbook

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers had to scream out different names for plays at one point during Sunday’s game so his receivers knew what pattern to run. In order to avoid such situations, the NFL should implement a standard offensive and defensive playbook instead of leaving it up to the coaches. At least then players would have some understanding of the plays before reaching the Pro Bowl.

If coaches want to add their own plays and packages (wildcat, for instance), then let them do as they please. But, the NFL still needs to require coaches to use a base playbook.

5) Play football!

I shut the television off Sunday shortly after ESPN flashed the rule changes for the game. No blitzing? No four-wide receiver packages? C’mon.

While the NFL is trying to exploit one-on-one match ups among the league’s best players, it is destroying real football. What’s next, red jerseys on the quarterbacks? The number of defensive lineman who simply ran past the quarterback indicates there may already be a phantom red jersey, anyway.

No one wants to get hurt, which is totally understandable. However, the NFL should not expect its all-star game to be popular if they play a different version of the sport.

How would the baseball all-star game look if the MLB outlawed head-first slides or inside pitches? How would the NBA all-star game look if players could not block shots or dunk the basketball?

Both analogies include the more dangerous parts of their respective sports. While football is undoubtedly more physical and the most dangerous of the three sports, the NFL has to let players play the game.

As Sunday showed, once you take strategy and physicality out of football, it is not much to look at.