For most, making the Pro Bowl in the NFL might seem like a high honor or a lifetime achievement, but for Alejandro Villanueva, it doesn’t seem like the award means all that much. He was named a Pro Bowler for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. On a recent podcast appearance on The Team House, he was asked about making the Pro Bowl, which the hosts referred to as a “prestigious” award.
“No, it’s not that prestigious at all,” Villanueva said. “None of the awards – everything becomes subjective. One of the things about American culture that I’ve always loved has been debates about Kobe [Bryant] and Michael Jordan, who’s better…even now, the media television for American football or sports in general is exactly just that – it’s an argument as to who’s better.”
The Pro Bowl is an annual award that is supposed to honor the best players at their respective positions each year in the NFL. The issue is that fans have part of the say in who is named to the list. In many circumstances, popular names will rise to the top of the fan vote regardless of their statistics or performance on the field that season. For example, T.J. Watt, who is a slam dunk for the list every time he is healthy, was named a Pro Bowler in 2022 despite missing seven games with injury and tallying only 5.5 sacks.
Fans account for a third of the total vote, along with coaches and players for the other two-thirds. Recently, Chuck Pagano discussed how he used to vote on the Pat McAfee Show and stated he would sift through and circle the names of players who he recognized as being good. Coaches have a million things going on in the middle of the season and don’t have time to pick through the list with a fine-toothed comb to look at their stats, much less their game film.
But none of that is what Villanueva was trying to get at. Like the Army Ranger he is, he pointed to his teammates and the circumstances around him that enabled him to win the award.
“I played with incredible players. I was with Le’Veon Bell, I was with Antonio Brown, I was with Ben Roethlisberger, so we had an incredible offense, and usually that’s what happens. You shine because everybody around you is so good,” Villanueva said. “The fact that I went to the Pro Bowl is silly.”
He brings up another great point that individual awards in a team sport can be incredibly hard to determine. A running back isn’t going to succeed without his offensive line. Pass rushers aren’t going to get home without good coverage, and vice versa.
The unfortunate part of this is that certain contractual matters are affected by these awards. Just this week, we learned RB Najee Harris’ fifth-year option amount. There are four categories of fifth-year options based on playing time and number of Pro Bowls. Harris made the Pro Bowl in his rookie season but as an alternate. That technicality could cost him slightly less than $3 million. Had he qualified for multiple Pro Bowls, he could have had a fifth-year option worth an additional $5.2 million.
That is a huge repercussion placed on an individual award that can be difficult to properly quantify. That is why many hold the AP All-Pro list in higher regard, but even that has proven to be a flawed system in some ways.
