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- Mar 19, 2019
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Ryan Kelly
Kelly this year is making his first-career Pro Bowl appearance. He was also selected to participate as an alternate; he got the call Jan. 9 to replace Pittsburgh Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey, who is unable to participate due to injury.
Kelly, 26, played in all 16 games in 2019 for the Colts, and anchored one of the league's top all-around offensive lines. Indy ranked seventh overall in rushing at 133.1 yards per game — just 1.5 rushing yards per game fewer than the fifth-place Dallas Cowboys — while the team's sack percentage (5.87) ranked tied for eighth in the league.
Kelly, according to Pro Football Focus, was the sixth-highest graded center in the league (73.0); his 74.6 run-blocking grade was fourth at the position, and he was only one of seven full-time centers to allow one or fewer sacks on the year.
Kelly said this week that his first Pro Bowl experience so far has been "kind of surreal."
"Obviously playing offensive line is not the most glamorous job — it's obviously a necessity to win games — but when you're in the same room as Russell Wilson and Drew Brees and Lamar Jackson, stuff like that, it just makes you think, 'This is such a cool, surreal moment, to have these larger-than-life superstars in the same room with you," Kelly said Friday in an appearance on 1075 The Fan's "The Ride With JMV."
One of the best parts of playing in the Pro Bowl, Kelly said, is the chance to meet some of the top offensive linemen in the game that he has been studying for years.
"A lot of the linemen, at this level, you watch so much game film from other teams that you feel like you know these players just by how they play. And then to be able to be in the same room with them and meet them and meet their families and just talk about stuff outside of football is such a cool thing," Kelly said. "Because at the end of the day we're all pretty similar guys, especially when it comes to offensive line play. For the most part it's just good dudes that love to play offensive line, just everything that comes with it, the brotherhood that comes with it. So getting to know a lot of these guys has been a really cool experience, and then I also think it's something you can take throughout the years (with you)."