Just two Seahawks on Pro Bowl roster proves what a crock the game is

Would you believe the Seahawks are 11-3? Judging from the Pro Bowl roster results for 2020 you would think Seattle is 3-11.

The Ravens landed 12 players on the 2020 Pro Bowl roster, tying the all-time mark. San Francisco is an 11-3 team and had four players make it. New Orleans, another 11-3 NFC team, got 7 players in. But your Seattle Seahawks had just two, Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner.

Not that Wilson and Wagner, both named starters by the way, are not deserving, they are. But before the season even started if you were two ask a casual NFL fan to name two players on the Seattle team they might easily choose Wilson and Wagner. Maybe that is how the voting for the Pro Bowl went as well. When the Seahawks card came through, people just looked at it and picked Wilson and Wagner because it seemed like an OK thing to do.

Don’t worry about the fact that Tyler Lockett is having a huge year and Chris Carson leads a formidable Seattle rushing attack. Ignore that Jadeveon Clowney is the sixth-highest graded edge rusher, per Pro Football Focus. Shaquill Griffin? He is the sixth-highest graded cornerback, and third-highest in the NFC. No of these players matter because they didn’t make the Pro Bowl.

The NFL’s version of an all-star game has been a silly idea for a long time. Players used to leave at halftime. Then the league decided that they needed to play the game the week before the Super Bowl, meaning that a lot of the best players in the NFL don’t even make the game because their teams are probably playing in the Super Bowl.

A lot of players have written into their contracts bonuses if they make the Pro Bowl but this is a bit like gambling because a good player has little input on whether they make the all-star game. Griffin, Clowney, Lockett and Carson all deserve to be Pro Bowlers. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the 11 teams the Seahawks have beaten this season how much better of a chance they would have had against Seattle had these four players not been playing opposite them.

But the Pro Bowl is really just a popularity contest. Fans, and even players, pick the names they know and not the best players in the league. The Bears, Buccaneers, Eagles and Cowboys all had more players named to the Pro Bowl than did Seattle, and yet three of those teams will not be making the playoffs. So again, the Pro Bowl is useless.