Written by Conor Orr at NFL.com
Backed up against the wall, Colts receiver T.Y. Hilton resembled a dodgeball Micky Ward. Plucky and undersized, he fended off Patrick Peterson, Mike Evans, Thomas Davis, Gerald McCoy and Ezekiel Elliott as the rest of his teammates watched from the sideline.
He whipped a ball at Odell Beckham when he wasn’t looking. He stockpiled ammo deep in his own corner. A concentration drop on a low worm-burner from Elliott turned out to be his undoing. But not without our respect.
“He caught a lot of balls at the end, he made a good comeback,” an alarmingly out of breath Elliott said after the game.
Dodgeball was by far the most competitive feature in the new, reimagined Pro Bowl Skills Showdown, which taped on Wednesday here in Orlando and aired Thursday night on ESPN. Participants on both teams received $10,000 to participate, but the winning team got an additional $7,500, which hinged on one team defeating the other in the popular gym class staple. The AFC, coached by Ray Lewis and Jerome Bettis, was woefully underprepared for an athletic, mobile NFC unit.
Dak Prescott gets chosen in this game before Alex Smith or Andy Dalton 10 times out of 10. Dalton was pegged before the 300-pound Geno Atkins.
Hilton and Alex Smith, who made several pleas to a nearby official to stay in the game after a ball bounced before hitting him, were delightfully interested in winning the game. It seems that even for a man on a five-year, $76 million contract, seven stacks will bring out the Pete Rose in you.
OTHER NOTES:
> Poor Mike Evans. It took him a while to nail the one-handed portion of theBest Hands competition, which asked receivers to complete a variety of different specialty grabs (over the shoulder, sideline, ect.) But he all feel like that competition was rigged in the favor of the two players who finished first and second — Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. — from the beginning. At the least, they had a distinct advantage in the one-handed catch competition seeing as they practice that ad nauseum. Don’t worryT.Y. Hilton, we will always remember you as dodgeball’s Leonidas I.
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