Everyone complains about the Pro Bowl being boring and meaningless, but it was actually kind of good this past season. Now the NFL wants to build on that momentum for next year. The NFL announced Wednesday that for the second consecutive year, the Pro Bowl will be held at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Fla.
Pro Bowl will return to Orlando in 2018 and keep everything that made it more fun
Last year’s Pro Bowl was more entertaining than usual.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
Jeanna Kelley has been covering the Falcons for The Falcoholic since 2011 and the NFL for SB Nation since 2015.
More importantly, the NFL is keeping everything that made it fun in 2017, like the Pro Bowl Skills Showdown and the return to a traditional AFC vs. NFC format.
The 2018 Pro Bowl will be held on Sunday, Jan. 28 at 3 p.m. ET, and it will air on ESPN and ESPN Deportes. For the first time ever, the game will also be simulcast on network television on ABC.
Last year’s game was better than usual, thanks in part to a wild finish. Kirk Cousins threw an interception to Aqib Talib, and then Cousins ran Talib down and tackled him. The pick ended a promising drive for the NFC, and the AFC was able to kneel it out and take the 20-13 victory.
We also got to enjoy some big play celebrations along the way, although Michael Bennett held back on this one because “three pumps gets you a fine.”
The Pro Bowl Skills Showdown — where players competed in games like dodgeball, precision passing, wide receiver drone drop, and a relay race — was even better than the game itself.
Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry made quick work of the Best Hands challenge. The Power Relay, where players had to work together to lift up a 250-pound wall and pull a 700-pound sled, ended with a running back smashing through a wall.
But the best event of the Skills Showdown had to be dodgeball. The NFC won, and Ezekiel Elliott was pretty pumped about it:
The NFL hosted the Pro Bowl in Honolulu’s Aloha Stadium for 30 straight years, starting in 1979. With the exception of a move to Miami’s Sun Life Stadium in 2009 and Arizona’s University of Phoenix Stadium in 2014, the Pro Bowl remained in Hawaii until the move to Orlando in 2017.
Despite low expectations, last season’s Pro Bowl was more exciting than we thought it’d be. Here’s hoping the second Pro Bowl in Orlando is even better.
See More:
