The NFL Ending The Pro Bowl – The Legacy of Robert Edwards

With the NFL sending out a press release to end the Pro Bowl, we saw this coming from a mile away once it was reduced to flag football. The same was true when 4th and 5th alternates who were also-rans were able to play in a game meant for superstars. Do you remember New England Patriots RB Robert Edwards?

Perennial 1,000-yard rusher and future PFHoF RB Curtis Martin had just left New England to play for the rival New York Jets and former Coach Bill Belichick. “With his free-agent defection, the Patriots selected Edwards, a power back from Georgia. He toted the rock 291 times for 1,115 yds and 9 TDs in his rookie season. He also had 35 receptions for 331 yards and another 3 scores. The Patriots definitely had Martin’s replacement and had a good future at running back.

All was right with the world…

Then while in Hawaii for the Pro Bowl week, Edwards injured his knee in a televised event with NFL players in a flag football game he participated in. Edwards dislocated his knee and severely damaged 3 ligaments. He had to be carried off and never carried the ball again for the Patriots franchise. They kept him on the roster another two seasons as he went through a 2nd surgery and subsequent rehabilitation.

His injury was so visible it cast a pall over the ’98 Pro Bowl and for the first time players thought about the risk of the Pro Bowl as much as wanting to compete in the football game. The prevailing thought crept in and eroded enthusiasm to play from that point. By the mid 2000s we started seeing players start to opt-out of participating. Not injured and unable to play, but sitting out based on benign excuses.

For decades, every player greatly wanted to play in the game and be recognized with the NFL’s best. Now players started to miss the games with the NFL taking notice of waning participation and interest in the game overall. Then in 2010, they changed the  Pro Bowl from being played the week after the Super Bowl to the week before. This happened right before the New Orleans Saints were facing the Indianapolis Colts in XLIV.

This was the fatal blow as now none of the Super Bowl participants could play and were automatic opt-outs. To give you an idea, if we go back to Super Bowl LVII (2023) the Philadelphia Eagles had 8 Pro Bowlers and the champion Kansas City Chiefs had 7. Now the league replaced all of the Super Bowl team’s Pro Bowl players and then another 14 opt-outs. Now 28 replacements were in the NFL’s all star game? That’s no longer the best of the best playing.

You know the rest of the deterioration: having it become flag football, having Deion Sanders & Jerry Rice pick teams. It just became an abomination. What really surfaced were franchises with players worth $50–$100 million being put into harm’s way playing in the game. The players remembering Robert Edwards, Melvin Bratton, and Willis McGahee injuring themselves at the end of a season were now thinking of it as business themselves.

Robert Edwards in 1998 served as a cautionary tale where players and teams alike began to think of the risk factor first. It permeated to college with Willis McGahee injuring his knee in the 2003 National Champinship Game for Miami. It was deja vu for the Hurricanes when Melvin Bratton had a similar injury in the 1988 Orange Bowl to win the National Championship.

Both running backs went on to the NFL. McGahee would go on to play 10 years and gain 8,474 yards. As for Bratton and Edwards? They suffered their injuries a decade earlier—or two decades earlier in Bratton’s case—and medical advancements in reconstructing knees with better recovery rates weren’t as developed.

Bratton only played 32 games and gained a total of 190 yards for the Denver Broncos. He went from a dominant force on a team that played for 3 straight National Championships and a projected 1st round selection to not gaining 200 yards in his entire NFL career.

Edwards endured two major surgeries and never returned to form. He missed the next two season trying to rehab his knee. The Patriots’ running game collapsed as they fell from 11th in the NFL in rushing in ’98 to 20th in ’99, prompting Head Coach Pete Carroll’s firing and the hiring of Bill Belichick. He wasn’t voted to the Pro Bowl but was with other NFL players who were there for the events the NFL puts on to enhance the fan experience.

With these injuries in mind and players looking at the whole of their livelihood, they were less willing to take risks participating. The game waned until its become time to pull the plug. I’m a purist but this is real life and understanding the players is why this game is being abolished. Its been a slow erosion to becoming a relic of the past.

RIP Pro Bowl, you were once a showcase but the NFL is moving on.

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