Brandon Meriweather Says Players Get 'Dead Drunk' Before Pro Bowl

Former NFL safety Brandon Meriweather said on the Toucher and Rich radio show Wednesday that many NFL players choose to get drunk before they play in the Pro Bowl. 

"I went to [my first Pro Bowl in 2010] and some people were like, ‘Look, man. I’m playing dead serious. I’m finna win this,’" Meriweather said on the program, per CSNNE.com. "And a lot—most players are like, ‘Man, I’m finna get dead drunk before the game, man.’ They ain’t playing nothing."

He added during the interview (via Henry McKenna of USA Today): "It was just something to warm me up before the game."

Meriweather, who participated in two Pro Bowls during a career that included stints with the Chicago Bears, Washington, New York Giants and New England Patriots, said his approach to the game changed dramatically after his first appearance.

"My first year going, I didn’t know what to expect," he noted. "The first couple of plays I was in, players were like, ‘Hey, chill out. What are you doing, man?’ After that, the next year I was like, ‘Man, I’m chilling. Ain’t nobody going to be playing hard. I’m chilling.’"

Given the general nature of the Pro Bowl—many players choose to skip the NFL's version of an All-Star Game altogether, while the contest itself rarely features hard hitting or much defense to speak of—it isn't all that surprising that players might not take it seriously.

One change the game attempted in recent years was to appoint Pro Bowl legend captains to pick teams based on the players selected by the fans. This year's games will go back to the traditional format of AFC vs. NFC, however, with Jerome Bettis and Ray Lewis serving as the captains for the AFC and Tony Gonzalez and Charles Woodson filling the role for the NFC.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell noted after last year's game he was uncertain what direction the game would take in the future after being disappointed with what he deemed to be a lack of quality play on the field, according to Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com:

"

I think our biggest standard has to be what we expect from the NFL and what our fans expect from the NFL. If it's not quality, it's not a real competition that we can be proud of, we have to do something different. That's my number one priority right now. I'm open to new ideas, I'm open to how we do it, but it's not the kind of game that I think we want to continue to have in its current format, based on what we saw last week.

"

It's hard to imagine Goodell's idea of a quality product includes players getting drunk before the game.

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