2015 NFL Pro Bowl Will Feature Narrowed Goal Posts, Increased Timeouts

The NFL has experimented with the Pro Bowl in recent years to make the event more marketable. They've allowed former players to draft the teams instead of going with the traditional NFC vs. AFC format, for instance, and they also moved the game to the week before the Super Bowl rather than playing it after the championship game.

This year, the experimentation continues, as the league announced the width of the goal posts would decrease from 18 to 14 feet to make field goals more difficult. The league also announced that each team would be given two timeouts per quarter rather than three per half, via Marc Sessler of NFL.com.

Many of the rules instituted last year, like two-minute warnings in every quarter, no kickoffs and a shorter play clock, among others, will remain in place.

Of course, the NFL can't help the fact that quite a few stars won't be present in this year's game. Among the quarterbacks alone, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger pulled out of the game due to injury, while Joe Flacco declined to play due to the pending birth of his child, via Darin Gantt of Pro Football Talk.

That opened up the door for a surprising choice, per Pro Football Talk on Twitter:

The NFL has spent a lot of time and energy trying to make the Pro Bowl a more appealing contest for fans, but the game remains somewhat unappealing for many because countless players pull out of the event fearing injury, and the game itself is played cautiously by many players to reduce the risk of getting hurt. 

Such is the plight of an exhibition game in a contact sport. It's hard to imagine making field goals harder to convert or adding two extra timeouts will change that fact.