ESPN is expanding the role of its heavy hitters from Monday Night Football to boost its five-day Pro Bowl coverage here next week.

MNF has been cable TV’s most-watched series for the past decade and the network is counting on its key members to help reverse the all-star game’s four-year ratings slide.

MNF play-by-play host Mike Tirico and analyst Jon Gruden will head coverage of Wednesday’s two-hour primetime Pro Bowl draft from Wheeler Army Airfield on ESPN2 in addition to the Jan. 31 game from Aloha Stadium on ESPN.

ESPN said the draft show, where team captains Michael Irvin and Jerry Rice select their squads from the 88 players voted to the game by fans, players and coaches, will resemble an NFL team’s draft meeting. Tirico, Gruden, Irvin and Rice will “gather around a table discussing which players to select for the unconferenced team,” ESPN said.

The discussion, which will focus on skill position players, will be interspersed with highlights from the 2015 season and Gruden will do separate segments along the lines of his “Gruden’s QB camp” series.

The draft will be produced and directed by the network’s 25-year MNF team, Jay Rothman and Chip Dean. An ESPN spokeswoman said the network will use 120 people on its game broadcast and 80 for the draft.

“Our goal is to put a brand new spin on this Pro Bowl draft show — we want fans to feel like they’re eavesdropping on a production meeting,” Rothman said in a statement. “We also feel it is important to showcase where we are, so we’ll sprinkle in scenes from Wheeler and Pearl Harbor and pay tribute to those who served and serve our country.”

The pool of players selected for the Pro Bowl will watch the draft unfold from an adjacent hangar, where service members from five military branches and their families also will gather.

Ratings for the Pro Bowl have dropped steadily since 2011, when the game drew an audience of 13.4 million. Last year’s game attracted 8.8 million viewers.

ESPN regained the Pro Bowl last year after a four-year break as part of an eight-year rights agreement that runs through 2020, but this will be the first year the network has the Pro Bowl draft.

The Pro Bowl draft had been on the NFL Network since the concept debuted in 2014. The game had matched players from the NFC versus the AFC since 1971.

The teams are scheduled to practice at the Turtle Bay Resort.