Was the new Pro Bowl format a success? Some say yes, some say no. But it looked like a game of tackle football and not Dancing With The Stars in Hawaii on Sunday night.
And the players we heard from liked it, too, such as Antonio Cromartie, who tweeted:
I hope u guys enjoyed the pro bowl I think @nfl @DeionSanders n @JerryRice did a heck of a Job. This was by far the best Pro Bowl I played n*
The score certainly hinted at a good game — Team Rice prevailed, 22-21, over Team Sanders on DeMarco Murray's 20-yard scoring pass from Alex Smith and Mike Tolbert's two-point run with 41 seconds left in the game.
It was the first one-point Pro Bowl victory since 1983, when the NFC topped the AFC, 20-19, the first one-score margin of victory since the AFC's 31-28 win in 2007, and the lowest-scoring Pro Bowl since the NFC's 23-17 verdict in '06.
For our Jets in the game, Cromartie had a 42-yard return of Justin Tucker's short 66-yard field goal try to end the first half. He also tweeted that "Jus got my ankles broke by Morris," meaning Redskins RB Alfred Morris.
And C Nick Mangold was snapping to Drew Brees early and Philip Rivers and Alex Smith as well as Team Rice's backup center. In fact, Mangold, No. 74 in the photo above, got to celebrate after throwing one of the blocks that got Tolbert into the end zone for his decisive deuce.
