Heading into next week’s Pro Bowl Games, ESPN has announced its broadcast plans for the NFL’s reimagined event.
The skills competitions will begin on Thursday, February 2nd, airing from 7 PM to 8:30 PM ET, and end on Sunday, February 5th, with the entire day of action on Sunday taking place from 3 PM-6 PM ET. The three flag football games will also take place during that Sunday window. Thursday’s action will air on ESPN alone, with Sunday’s airing on ABC, ESPN, ESPN+, and Disney XD.
Robert Griffin III, Marcus Spears, and Laura Rutledge will call the skills competitions on both Thursday and Sunday. They’ll be joined on Thursday’s coverage by Ryan Clark and Dan Orlovsky.
Sunday’s flag football games will be called by Kirk Herbstreit and Pat McAfee, with coaches Peyton and Eli Manning and various players mic’d up.
As for the skills contests, I’ll let ESPN’s release do the heavy lifting here.
In addition to the Flag football games, these skills challenges will take place on Sunday: Best Catch Finale presented by Uber Eats, Gridiron Gauntlet, Kick-Tac-Toe and Move The Chains competitions.
The Pro Bowl Games presented by Verizon begin Thursday, live in primetime, with five skill challenges: Epic Pro Bowl Dodgeball presented by Bud Light (three games), multiple part Lightning Round, Longest Drive presented by Bud Light, Precision Passing presented by EA SPORTS Madden NFL 23 Mobile and the first round of the Best Catch presented by Uber Eats.
Points will be given to the conference who wins each skills contest and the first two flag football games, and that score will be the starting score for the third and final flag football game.
Give the NFL credit for trying something new, I guess. We’ll have to wait until next week to see if it’s actually an improvement, though.
[ESPN]
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.