Shedeur Sanders was named to the 2026 Pro Bowl games on Monday as an alternate in one of the most incredibly fun events of the season that no longer made sense. Injuries, disinterest and a dearth of quality quarterbacks in the AFC led to the selection of Sanders, who is, without a doubt, the worst QB to ever participate in any Pro Bowl event.
The AFC will be coached by Josh Allen, with Justin Herbert and Drake Maye as reserves. Sanders will take Maye’s place as the Patriots play in the Super Bowl. That means we’re going to have an All-Star quarterback with the following 2025 stats:
It’s not meant to be an indictment of Sanders to point out that he sucked, it’s just reality. Rookies struggle and can sometimes bounce back in a big way, but putting him on a Pro Bowl roster is absurd. Here’s a list of AFC quarterbacks who outperformed Sanders this season, aren’t injured, but didn’t outperform him, sorted by passer rating.
We have nine healthy quarterbacks who should have gotten the nod over Sanders for that Pro Bowl spot. It’s likely that all nine turned down NFL invitations, but that seems far-fetched, raising questions about whether it was about marketability rather than talent. While Sanders was objectively horrible to anyone who watched football, he also attracts more attention than anyone on the list above, aside from perhaps Joe Burrow.
In terms of where Sanders ranks among the worst Pro Bowl quarterbacks of all time, that’s a bit of a complicated question. The Pro Bowl began in 1951, but if we take it from the Super Bowl era, Sanders ranks 15th all-time for the lowest QB rating of a player to be named to the roster. Still, that number is a bit of a lie, because we know how much the NFL has changed over the years. If you look back to the mid-1960s, the best quarterbacks in the NFL finished with a passer rating in the low to mid-80s, because that’s how the game was played.
If we fast forward to 1990 and look at the list of Pro Bowl quarterbacks, we’ll have a better idea of where these quarterbacks stand in the modern era. Here’s the lowest-rated Pro Bowl quarterback of each decade.
1990s: Brett Favre (1993) – 72.2 rating
2000s: Vince Young (2006) – 66.7 rating
2010s: Andrew Luck (2012) – 76.5 rating
2020s: Shedeur Sanders (2025) – 68.1 rating
From this we see that the only quarterback who was as bad as Sanders but selected for a Pro Bowl was Vince Young, but the devil is in the details. During that 2006 rookie season, Young rushed for over 500 yards and 7 touchdowns. That dual-threat nature gave him 19 total touchdowns and 13 turnovers, while Sanders had 8 touchdowns and 10 turnovers.
Considering each player’s role in the NFL at the time they played, taking into account that quarterbacks are dual-threat players and their effect on the season they played, there is no doubt: Shedeur Sanders is the worst Pro Bowl quarterback in history.
