The NFL finally did away with the Pro Bowl game, it was announced Monday, confirming something I had long suspected, that the game just wasn’t as good or interesting as it used to be.
It’s not that the players I grew up watching ever went full throttle in the Pro Bowl, but it wasn’t the joke of a football game it’s been over the last decade or so. A part of me had wondered if I simply aged out of a demographic that actually cared about the game, that maybe the kids were still watching. But the NFL’s decision to convert the game into a week of skills competitions tells me that demographic doesn’t exist.
With the Pro Bowl now a thing of the past, I’m left with one awesome memory to remind me of a time when I did watch and enjoy. You already know what I’m talking about, because it’s probably your last great memory too — maybe even your only memory from the game. It’s the late great Sean Taylor’s hit on punter Brian Moorman.
Still the most iconic Pro Bowl highlight of all time, courtesy of Sean Taylor 🙌 (Feb. 12, 2006) @Redskins pic.twitter.com/C7CUFCVJtp
— NFL Legacy (@NFLLegacy) January 22, 2019
My favorite part about the play is the collective “oooooooo” from the crowd and announcer, and all of us at home too. Taylor isn’t even in the picture for the majority of the play, then he comes from out of nowhere to flatten a punter. It’s just something you don’t expect to see. Not even in a regular season game. I’m not sure Moorman would’ve made the first down anyway, but Taylor made sure he definitely didn’t get it. The way Moorman laid on the ground suggests he wasn’t sure if his body was still in tact.
To put the hit in context, this was the 2007 Pro Bowl. Fifteen years later, and nothing has topped it as the greatest Pro Bowl highlight ever. Unless they revive the game sometime in the future, nothing ever will.
