Pro Bowl is stupid, but ARob and Roquan Smith got snubbed

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It's hard to tell what's more trite these days: complaining about Pro Bowl snubs, or complaining about the complainers. This, in essence, is why Pro Bowl discourse is a soul-sucking waste of time: the only thing it does is create two alternative sides of equally dull conversation. Caring about the Pro Bowl is stupid because, duh, it's the Pro Bowl. (And they're not even playing one this year! We're all being robbed the privilege of watching NFL athletes wearing dark sunglasses on a cloudy day in Orlando jump into ball pits.) But *not* caring about the Pro Bowl has become a clichè too – it's NFL news, they tell us, and we should care! The Pro Bowl is a dirty old well from which terrible tweets spring, and the sooner everyone wipes their hands of an event with all the pageantry of a Saturday morning at the DMV – and stops assigning value based on algorithmic hashtag campaigns – the better. 

With that said, Allen Robinson got snubbed this year. And Roquan Smith got super snubbed this year. 

We'll start with Robinson. As it stands currently, the NFC Pro Bowl WRs are Green Bay's Davante Adams, Seattle's DK Metcalf, Minnesota's Justin Jefferson, and Arizona's DeAndre Hopkins. All 4 of those guys are deserving, and remember, (don't worry we'll come back to this point a lot) the Pro Bowl is stupid. Hopkins, Metcalf, Jefferson, and Adams rank 1st, 4th, 7th, and 8th, in receiving yards so far. Robinson ranks 9th, and did so catching passes from Nick Foles for the better part of half a season. He also ranks 1st in contested catches, 2nd in 15+ yard receptions, and 5th in overall PFF grade. He basically put up the same numbers as those guys without the benefit of, you know, a Hall of Fame QB in their prime. Or a young star who's just beginning what looks to be an incredible career. Or Kirk Cousins. Truthfully, I don't actually have any beef with who gets to pretend to go to the Pro Bowl this year – they're all very good. Allen Robinson's also very good and his salary next year will continue reflecting that. 

On its face, Smith's snub seems more egregious, but who cares? He lost out to San Francisco's Fred Warner and Seattle's Bobby Wagner, and again, who cares. Smith had more tackles (128) than both, more tackles for loss (17) than both, and more sacks (4) than both. He also had more QB hits than Warner, but say it with me one more time: who cares. The only person who's allowed to gripe about not being named to an event that doesn't exist is Smith, and that's because he would have earned himself a nice $3 million bonus if he had been named to the event that doesn't exist. If the divine gift of a 2020 Pro Bowl certificate was actually bestowed to a select chosen few based on their statistics, Smith probably deserved that footnote at the bottom of his Wikipedia page. He certainly deserves a pay raise. But, like Robinson, he'll soon get one regardless. 

Stop caring about the Pro Bowl. Are you not angry enough about PFF grades? Do you not feel enough rage when someone tweets about how Ryan Pace actually could have drafted Pat Mahomes (or Deshaun Watson! Either one!) but instead drafted Mitch Trubisky? If central Florida can barely muster up enough energy to care about the Pro Bowl, what's your excuse?

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