Pro Bowl Spots Don’t Add Up for Top Teams

This season’s Pro Bowl voting demonstrates why football is a team game.

The New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, with the best records in the AFC and NFC, each had only two players voted into the league’s All-Star game, which will be played Feb. 8 in Honolulu.

“You are a little deflated for a few minutes, but then you move on,” John Harbaugh, the Eagles’ special teams coach, said Thursday. “We have bigger and more important things to be concerned with.”

The Eagles and Patriots aren’t the first winning teams to be shortchanged in the voting by fans, players and coaches.

Last season, Tennessee had no Pro Bowl players and used the snub as motivation and made it to the AFC title game. This season, the Titans got four, led by quarterback Steve McNair.

“It is kind of bittersweet, because even though we have one of the best records in the league, we only had two guys get selected,” said cornerback Ty Law of the Patriots, whose only other selection is defensive lineman Richard Seymour.

Quarterback Donovan McNabb and cornerback Troy Vincent were the only Eagles on the NFC squad.

Baltimore and Kansas City had the most selections with eight each.

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The police officer who arrested the Titans’ McNair on a drunken driving charge last spring violated department policy and was suspended for 15 days.

Officer Shawn Taylor was suspended after a disciplinary hearing. Taylor, a six-year police veteran, violated the department’s pre-arrest screening policy by improperly telling McNair he would allow him to leave if his breath-alcohol level registered below a certain number. That was after Taylor already witnessed physical evidence indicating McNair was impaired.

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Cincinnati Bengal quarterback Jon Kitna said the NFL fined him $5,000 for wearing a baseball cap marked with a cross. In wearing the cap at postgame news conferences, Kitna violated an NFL rule prohibiting the wearing of non-NFL apparel immediately after a game. Television footage of Kitna, an avid reader of the Bible, showed him wearing the red cap marked with a white cross.

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Veteran quarterback Neil O’Donnell rejoined the Titans after the NFL approved a deal that the team squeezed under the salary cap.... Denver Bronco running back Clinton Portis missed his second consecutive day of practice because of injuries to his right leg. He is questionable for the Broncos’ game Sunday at Indianapolis.