The Pro Bowl is just a few weeks away, and the NFL has officially announced a plethora of new competitions that will take place all throughout the weekend.

For years, the Pro Bowl was essentially a waste of time – for both the players involved and the fans who watched. Hopefully with the creation of these new competitions, players will be more enthusiastic and, dare I say, actually try? We shall see.

Here’s a quick list of the new competitions players will compete in during Pro Bowl week.

NFL Pro Bowl Skills Competitions:

Thursday, February 2:

• Epic Pro Bowl Dodge Ball
• Lightning Round
• Longest Drive
• Precision Passing
• Best Catch

Sunday, February 5:

• Best Catch (finale)
• Gridiron Gauntlet
• Kick Tac Toe
• Move The Chains

The skills competitions will have a cumulative score leading up to the flag football games throughout Sunday, Feb. 5. Here’s a look at how the scoring will work for the competitions, per NFL.com:

• The winning conference of each skill competition earns three points towards their team’s overall score, with 24 total points available across the eight skills events.
• The winning conference from each of the first two Flag football games on Sunday will earn six points for their team, for a total of 12 available points.
• Points from the skills competitions and first two Flag games will be added together and will be the score at the beginning of the third and final Flag game, which will determine the winning conference for The Pro Bowl Games.

Who knows if this Pro Bowl innovation will actually persuade people to tune in, but there are a handful of events I’m anxious to watch.

First and foremost, I’m all in on the long-drive competition. I mean, who doesn’t want to see a bunch of juiced up NFL players trying as hard as they can to launch golf balls? I have to imagine that most of these players are active golf players during the offseason. If they’re going to actually put in effort for any of these comps, it’ll be this one.

Personally, I was hoping the NFL would go back to their roots with some of these activities. All I want to see is the fastest man competition and which quarterback can throw the farthest. My mush brain doesn’t care about anything else. I just like seeing fast people run and quarterbacks throw footballs long distances. Is that really too much to ask?

Listen to the most recent episode of Grease the Poles

Eagles Clinch One Seed After Defeating New York, Looking Ahead to Wildcard Weekend, Best/Worst Matchups, Wildcard Wishlist – Grease the Poles

The road to the Super Bowl officially goes through Philadelphia after the Eagles best the Giants in the regular season finale. Since the Eagles now have the week off, we look ahead to Wildcard weekend to pick our favorite matchups on the slate, breakdown which 7th seed has a better chance to win, go through our Wildcard Wishlist, and more. DraftKings Sportsbook sign-up: https://bit.ly/DKTLL200 Music Credit: Le Vrai (Instrumental) by Brakhage [freemusicarchive.org] 

Mandatory Credit: NFL.com