AFC takes early lead over NFC in newly designed Pro Bowl

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — Las Vegas quarterback Derek Carr scored an event-high 31 points in the precision passing contest of the Pro Bowl skills competitions Thursday night to give the AFC an early 9-3 lead over the NFC.

Carr, in familiar territory with the events being held at Raiders headquarters, said he will not extend the Feb. 15 deadline to help facilitate a trade from Las Vegas. The Raiders must trade or release the quarterback by that date — three days after the Super Bowl — or Carr’s contract will become guaranteed and Las Vegas will have to pay him $40.4 million over the next two years.

But his performance during the two-day competitions boosted the AFC with each event counting as three points.

The AFC also won the lightning round — a series of competitions that included a water balloon toss — and long drive contest, and the NFC got on the scoreboard by winning the dodgeball tournament.

The NFL changed the Pro Bowl format this year, replacing the traditional all-star game with a flag football contest and series of other skills events. Four skills events take place Sunday at Allegiant Stadium, and those also will be three points each.

Three flag football games will then be played, the first two each worth six points. The points will then be combined with those accumulated from the skills events, which will be the score entering the third and final flag football game to determine the winner.

Most of Thursday’s events were played at the Raiders’ facility before about 500 fans, cheerleaders from 12 teams and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Crosby acknowledged some technical difficulties as part of the event when the foam surfboards wouldn’t go down when MacKinnon hit them. That was just one of the trappings of trying something new outside, which the NHL wanted to do after holding an event at the Bellagio’s famous fountains last year on the Las Vegas Strip.

“We wanted to do a few things outside to give the Florida feel to it,” NHL senior executive VP and chief content officer Steve Mayer said. “We knew coming to Florida we had to be outside, and we knew it’s a risk. Doing an event like this, which as you can imagine is not cheap, you (accept) a little risk. If we’re in a rainy week, this is a disaster. But it was worth the risk, and it’s worth being outside.”

The outside events went better and created more buzz than many of the developments inside. The slow pace of the event, a listless atmosphere in the arena with a crowd lacking energy with plenty of empty seats and some odd moments like Boston’s David Pastrnak doing a “Happy Gilmore” impression led to criticism on social media.

Anaheim’s Trevor Zegras, one of the cover athletes for the NHL 23 video game who provided the highlight of last year’s skills competition by scoring a spinning goal while blindfolded, tweeted a sleeping emoji. Golfer Brad Fritsch posted: “I guess I can delete the recording of @NHL skills competition? I’m hearing things are … not good.”