Count B.J. Raji among those who think the NFL would be better served having NFL scouts choose the Pro Bowl teams instead of the combined vote of fans, players and coaches.
The Green Bay Packers defensive lineman expressed no ill feelings for being left off this year’s team after making it last season, and he doesn’t mind the way the vote is conducted now.
But he suggested there’s a capriciousness to making the team under current rules, and that players’ votes can be influenced by irrelavent factors.
“There won’t be any bias there,” he said of having pro scouts voting. “The pro scouting department, they look at so much (video) tape, they know what they see, their eyes don’t lie type of thing. Like, you played against a guy, he cheap shot you, so you don’t like him, so you’re not going to vote him type thing. There’s no hard feelings (with the scouts).
“But this way is fine with me. It works. Last year I was in, I was happy. This year I didn’t get in, I’m not really upset but obviously as a player you’d like to get in. It happens. In the NFC, some years you’re going to have a good year and not make it, I’ve been through that, and some years you’re like, ‘OK, I did all right,’ and you wind up in the Pro Bowl.”
Raji said the players’ vote isn’t a league-wide aggregate, but is based on each team getting one vote per position. So the player at each position who gets the most votes by the Packers then gets one vote in the league voting. Offensive players vote for defensive players, and vice versa. Teams cannot vote for their own players.
Raji said that when he votes, he asks teammates about the best players they faced at their positions, but that not all players do that.
“Reputation has a lot to do with it,” he said. “I think also nationally televised games, as I alluded to earlier. It depends. Some guys I’ve heard they’ll vote for the worst guy on the list because they want one of their teammates to get on there. A lot of things that go into that shouldn’t.”