Pro Bowl Voting For Fans Down To Its Final Days

With fan voting (which counts for a third of the voting between  for the 2015 Pro Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona concluding on Monday, December 15, there is only few days for you to vote on the Pro Bowl ballot. Below is an update of the current Pro Bowl voting leaders, via Doug Kyed, Patriots beat reporter for NESN.com. 

Here are the latest Pro Bowl voting results. Fans have until Dec. 15 to vote. pic.twitter.com/I0u3GdDFdK

— Doug Kyed (@DougKyedNESN) December 10, 2014

With fan voting beginning in the middle of October, however, some players who make impressive late-season runs with their play may not get the opportunity to play in the game. The safety duo of the Detroit Lions (who have the second-ranked total defense in the NFL), Glover Quin and James Ihedigbo, attempted to make that case today and brought some suggestions as well, according to ESPN Detroit Lions Reporter Michael Rothstein:

Detroit Lions’ Glover Quin is rated fifth among safeties in the NFL, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s tied for second in the NFL with interceptions among defensive backs, with five.

His safety-mate, James Ihedigbo, is tied for fifth in the NFL in interceptions among defensive backs, with four. Yet neither one is in the Top 10 in Pro Bowl balloting by fans at either position.

So Quin, when asked about the Pro Bowl balloting on Wednesday and changes he would make, he asked if there were television cameras, if they could be turned on. He wanted NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to hear his message. And here it is:

“How would I change the voting? First of all, in my opinion, why do the fans need two months to vote in my opinion? So I would say, I also feel like, something should be said about playing in the majority of the games. How can you have a Pro Bowl season if you only played in 10 games, right? So I wouldn’t start the fan voting until after Week 13. Vote 13, 14, 15, season’s over with but you’ve had 12 games. Everybody had their bye and played in 12 games by Week 13 so the fans had 12 games to see who is playing well, who has been on the field. You’ve got two weeks to fan vote and then you let the media and everybody else vote. Why do they need two months to sit there and vote 500,000 times. And they are probably just voting for Tashaun Gipson, which he had a great first half of the season but he’s been hurt for the last four or five games. I think you move that back, you give fans time to say OK this guy has performed a certain way for 12 games and he’s been out on the field, he’s been trending the right way and you give them two weeks to get their votes in. If you can’t your votes in in two weeks, what’s the difference between having a million fan votes and 400,000 fan votes, you’re still going to be a leader.

“Scouts in the NFL should create the ballot. I don’t feel like everybody, like a Grammy nomination, it’s an honor to be nominated for a Grammy. Whether you win or not, it’s an honor to be nominated. It’s a major thing. So if we’re talking about the ballot, why is everybody on the ballot and they haven’t had close to a Pro Bowl year. It should be an honor to be on the Pro Bowl ballot. So now the fans don’t have to choose between 35 free safeties. It’s only seven. These are the only guys who are having Pro Bowl years. Why you got everybody on the ballot that ain’t even Pro Bowl-worthy?

“…It should be an honor. They want players to play hard in the Pro Bowl? It should be an honor to be on the ballot. Period. It should be an honor, like, ‘Man, I’m on the Pro Bowl ballot.’ You know what I mean. How do you have a guy on the Pro Bowl ballot who has 10 tackles and a pass breakup.”

In the midst of his loud, forceful rant about the Pro Bowl, he drew a small crowd of players as well. Ihedigbo joked he sounded like he was preaching to a church.

And when Ihedigbo was asked if he agreed with what Quin was saying, he smiled and said, “100 percent.”

Quin and Ihedigbo make some very good points, as a full evaluation of a player’s performance for an entire year can only be done near the end of the regular season, as injuries and/or inconsistency from players who have dropped off from their early season start. A perfect example would be the way that Aaron Rodgers has played after a 1-2 start with bad games against the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions, looking like far and away the best quarterback in the league, yet only second in Pro Bowl voting behind a Peyton Manning that has thrown only one touchdown to two interceptions in his last two games, or Julio Jones being ranked ninth in Pro Bowl voting among receivers despite leading the league in receiving yards (1,428).

At the same time, voting at the end of the year would also make fans go with players who might be coming on strong, but haven’t been consistent throughout the season. It is a tough dilemma, and one that will be worth watching throughout the end of this year to see which players were potentially snubs from participating in this year’s Pro Bowl.