In the latest example of how far the NFL’s Pro Bowl has fallen, rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders, who played in just eight games, less than half of the 17 on the schedule, was named as a replacement Pro Bowler this week.
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Sanders actually went 3-4 with a Cleveland Browns team that was 2-8 before plugging him in as the starter in Week 11. He threw seven TDs against 10 picks, was last among qualified QBs in completion percentage (56.6) and second-last in passer rating (68.1). This could be the shakiest forced Pro Bowl nod since Tyler Huntley made it in 2022 despite starting just four games.
While most have taken the opportunity to lambast the league, Sanders, and the Pro Bowl Games themselves especially, Michael Irvin has taken a different tack. He’s taking the uber-logical view of the situation, saying that because Sanders is such a big name, it makes sense for the league to put him in when they needed a replacement. For the business, of course!
“Are they putting him up there because they want to profit off him,” Irvin suggested. “Nobody cared about the Pro Bowl. Now everybody cares, everybody’s talking about the Pro Bowl. Nobody was talking about the Pro Bowl, but now everybody’s talking about the Pro Bowl. All of that may have something to do with it.”
Irvin also said that Sanders being at the Pro Bowl and being called a Pro Bowler in his rookie season is a “hell of an accomplishment” no matter how he got there. Irvin argued that success in sports nowadays is no longer about the “sweat on your brow”, using Jake Paul as an example of how you can use other currency to make it big.
“Jake Paul has done wonders with his popularity and his notoriety, it’s a currency,” Irvin said. “This is the business. Jake Paul didn’t work his way up through amateur boxing … he took the currency of notoriety, visibility and he surpassed all of those guys that did it the old way.”
If you’re wondering how we even got here, it’s as embarrassing as you’d expect. Josh Allen, Drake Maye, and Justin Herbert were named to the Pro Bowl as the AFC QBs. Fair enough.
But Maye is in the Super Bowl, and both Allen and Herbert opted out due to injury: Herbert with that broken hand and Allen with a broken foot he just had surgically repaired.
Patrick Mahomes and Bo Nix were also injured, but there were a lot of other healthy QBs available. Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, and Trevor Lawrence, to name a few. That means the league either went over those guys to go to Shedeur, which would be unthinkable, or they asked these guys to participate and they said no.
Either way, the Pro Bowl is looking just as messy as the Pro Football Hall of Fame right about now.
