The NFL’s worst quarterback is going to the Pro Bowl.
That’s not hyperbole. Nor a prank. Shedeur Sanders started all of seven games for the Cleveland Browns in 2025. He threw more touchdown passes than interceptions only twice in that span. He threw for more than 209 yards once. Yet, despite his stunning lack of a Sunday resume, he’s reportedly getting the call to fill in at the 2026 NFL Pro Bowl Games as an alternate, because Pro Bowl invitations are meaningless for quarterbacks.
37 NFL quarterbacks played at least 250 snaps in 2025. Sanders’ -0.186 expected points added (EPA) per snap ranked… 37th, considerably worse than 36th-place Cam Ward. The league literally could not have found a worse starting quarterback to bring to its all-star game. Er, games.
This is stunning and, somehow, not surprising. NFL quarterbacks have made opting out of major sports’ most meaningless exhibition game a tradition over the two decades. Flip through any roster from the 2010s onward and you’ll find several years with at least 10 different quarterbacks named to the AFC and NFC rosters as players decided delaying their offseason for a trip to Orlando was a losing proposition. With a limited pool to pull from, the league has long dipped into an uninspiring pool of alternates to fill in.
Mac Jones, for example, is a former Pro Bowler. Tyrod Taylor made the cut in 2015 then declined one season later despite serving as a risk-averse caretaker for a forgettable Buffalo Bills offense. Tyler Huntley got the call in 2022 after throwing… TWO TOUCHDOWN PASSES THAT SEASON.
Sanders now becomes the basement for a slapdash skyscraper whose elevator stops at floors named for Gardner Minshew, David Garrard, the 2014 edition of Andy Dalton and the Pittsburgh Steelers version of Russell Wilson. While the game can still offer contract incentives for players, it’s evolved into a weekend of family time for fans before the deluge of the Super Bowl seven days later.
Things have gotten so desperate the league can’t even find average, game-managing passers to show up like Alex Smith and Teddy Bridgewater in years past. We’ve gone beyond the useful fill-in work for a playoff team of Huntley to a quarterback who was simply bad for the league’s 31st-ranked scoring offense.
In fairness, Sanders will be extremely fun to watch in a flag football situation. He’s got name value and undeniable talent obscured by the bad habits that wash all his good points away. But the Pro Bowl can no longer be held up as a standard for elite play when it’s resorting to invites for players who can’t crack the top 30 at their position.
The Pro Bowl is no longer an appetizer for the Super Bowl. It’s instead the curtain jerker for the dulcet tones of the UFL and whatever failed spring football league that succeeds it.
