Mike Mayock of NFL Network and NBC joined PFT Live on Tuesday. Mayock, who’ll be covering the Scouting Combine like the swaddling clothing of a newborn, worked the Pro Bowl last month for NBC.
So I asked him which event will more closely resemble real football -- the Combine or the Pro Bowl. As to the latter, Mayock was candid.
“Doug Flutie and I looked at each other after the first snap, like, ‘What are we gonna do with this?’” Mayock said. “I was really stunned at the pace of play early. It picked up for a while. And I think the NFL has to make a decision. You either say we’re gonna make this thing more competitive or we’re need to take a step back, because the intensity of play was not acceptable for at least half the game.”
He’s right. And regardless of whether there’s anything the league can do to increase the intensity of the game, the league needs to decide whether it wants to try to make the Pro Bowl have something more than an amateur-hour effort, or whether the game needs to simply go away for good.