FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — For 86 of the NFL’s best players, including nine from the Jets and Giants, the season is ending where they wanted: in Miami.
Their timing’s off, though.
With a new venue and new slot on the league calendar, the Pro Bowl will be played tonight as a preliminary to next week’s Super Bowl on the same field.
Darrelle Revis said the Jets’ loss to the Colts in the AFC Championship game “is in the back of my mind still.”
“But but right now, with the Pro Bowl, we’re just out here with some great NFL players and you’ve just got to enjoy this time and have fun,” he said. “If we played them again in the future, that taste is going to come back for us to get a win over those guys.”
The NFL is trying to transform the Pro Bowl into a bigger game by playing it before the Super Bowl for the first time. In a one-year experiment, the league also moved the game from Honolulu, its home since 1980.
The results: increased media coverage and the best attendance in 51 years, with a sellout crowd of more than 70,000 expected.
Five Jets are on the AFC roster — Revis, offensive linemen D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Nick Mangold and Alan Faneca, defensive end Shaun Ellis. The Giants sent four players to Miami — receiver Steve Smith and offensive linemen David Diehl, Chris Snee and Shaun O’Hara.
The game will return to Honolulu in 2011 and 2012, but the league hasn’t decided whether to hold those games before or after the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl site for 2013 and beyond hasn’t been determined.