There are those who will tell you that the votes for Pro Bowl and All-Pro selections aren’t a big deal. It’s just a popularity contest, right? Well, not really. A lot of players have bonuses built into their contracts based on their nominations on those teams. Hall of Fame voters absolutely take the number of Pro Bowl and All-Pro selections into account when deciding who is given the NFL’s greatest honor.
The All-Pro vote is supposed to be taken more seriously because there is not a fan element involved, but when looking at the selections from a panel of 50 media members, it’s hard to say that every vote should be given equal weight. And that, for all the reasons listed above, is a real problem. Here’s the list for the 2019 team; see what you think, and give these five suggestions for improving the process a look-see.
Give every voter a subscription to an advanced metrics website.
Whether it’s Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, or Football Outsiders, there are websites which, for a nominal subscription rate, give anybody a much better look at who’s doing what in the NFL. I’m not talking about PFF’s grades, per se — I find them far less accurate than their charting stats. But those charting stats have a lot of merit, as do the SiS and FO numbers. With these subscriptions, you can do everything from deducing which quarterbacks and receivers are the best on which routes, which outside cornerbacks and slot cornerbacks are the most effective in coverage, which teams run which defenses most effectively, and which pass-rushers are the most disruptive beyond just sack numbers. There are too many votes that are obviously skewed to old-school box-score thinking, and we should be way past that at this point in time. We have better metrics, and the game has exploded in both complexity and positional specificity.
PFF also has positional snap counts, which would have helped the one voter who wanted to add Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark to the list of interior linemen. Per PFF, Clark has 718 defensive snaps this season, and six of those are inside — one at left defensive tackle, four at right defensive tackle, and one at nose tackle. We don’t know what this voter was thinking, but we’d sure like to.
And speaking of that…