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The new event will feature a variety of competitions.

Since 1951, the NFL has regularly held the yearly Pro Bowl, an all-star game featuring the best players from across the league’s various teams. However, this year, and potentially going foward, the Pro Bowl has been swapped out for something decidedly less football-related.

This new event, the Pro Bowl Games, will be a weeklong series of games and challenges that focus on skills related to football without actually involving playing football. Players have often been concerned about giving their all in the Pro Bowl game out of fear of injury in the time leading up to the Super Bowl, so this has been chosen as a safer alternative.

“The Pro Bowl is something that we’ve been looking at for a while, really continuing to evolve,” NFL executive Peter O’Reilly told The Associated Press. “Coming out of last year’s game, we really made the decision based on a lot of internal conversations, getting feedback from GMs and coaches, getting a lot of feedback from players. We think there’s a real opportunity to do something wholly different here and move away from the traditional tackle football game. We decided the goal is to celebrate 88 of the biggest stars in the NFL in a really positive, fun, yet competitive way.

“The feedback very directly from guys who had been in the Pro Bowl recently was to keep the construct of the week, make sure you’re having that multiday element. It was overwhelmingly positive both from players as well as from clubs.”

Introducing the 2023 Pro Bowl Games presented by Verizon. 🙌

Coming to @Vegas this February. pic.twitter.com/RdJRsMBK5U

— NFL (@NFL) September 26, 2022

Of particular interest is the game of flag football that the proceedings will conclude with. “You tap into all the stuff that feels great about Pro Bowl week, the skills, the helmets off, the engagement and then culminate that, keeping the AFC-NFC construct, in something that’s really important, which is flag football and that opportunity to have the best athletes in the NFL out there playing this game that is so much about the future of our sport,” said O’Reilly. “It’s been an evolution, but coming out of Las Vegas last year, we really focused on how do we reinvent and celebrate our all-stars even better.”