Did people care about the Pro Bowl slightly more back when it was held in Hawaii? But then again, that State's budget is also heavily mismanaged, with things like the Skyline rail money pit, and now they're going to demolish the old Aloha Stadium, which was already destined to fail because of the idiots who thought that building a Stadium with exposed steel in a tropical State with exposure to salt air was a good idea, to build a new one.
Players were less likely to skip out when the game represented a paid trip to Hawaii instead of the Bay Area in February, yes. Nothing is stopping Stafford from playing this week, but he bowed out to be replaced by Jared Goff (lol) anyways. Kelce knew he would be free in February two months ago, he withdrew and Kincaid is playing now. It's sourced from AI and I had to beat it a bit to get me a list I even remotely trusted (the initial data set was godawful, I'm now even more skeptical of any football stats I grab from ChatGPT instead of paying for StatMuse), but here's who all withdrew:
AFC:
Josh Allen, Zay Flowers, Brock Bowers, Travis Kelce, TJ Watt, Jalen Ramsey, Justin Herbert, Joe Alt, Quinn Meinerz, Quinton Nelson, Myles Garrett, Maxx Crosby, Chris Jones (not in Super Bowl, just withdrew, 13 total, pretty sure Alt *can't* play, so maybe reduce that to 12.)
Drake Maye & Christian Gonzales (Super Bowl conflict)
NFC:
Matthew Stafford, George Kittle, Quinyon Mitchell, Tristan Wirfs, Micah Parsons, Jalen Carter (6 total, reduced to 5 because Micah Parsons has the same problem Joe Alt has)
Sam Darnold, Devon Witherspoon, JSN, Rashid Shaheed, Demarcus Lawrence, Leonard Williams (6 total, Super Bowl conflict)
So the AFC is down an entire starting side of the ball, and then some, of its star players just deciding to skip it. NFC isn't as bad, with more than half their absences due to being in the FUCKING SUPER BOWL. If you're an invested AFC fan, why even watch? To see Calen Bullock lightly shove a guard? To see Shedeur or Flacco and continue to laugh at the Browns front office? Like, the best offensive stuff you're going to see from the replacements is maybe Tee Higgins leaning into his ability to juke because they're playing flag football.