Joe Flacco began the season as the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback before being traded to Cincinnati. Ben Jackson / Getty Images
Jan. 30, 2026 7:58 pm EST
As it turns out, the Cleveland Browns had not one, but two Pro Bowl quarterbacks on their roster in August.
Joe Flacco, who started the 2025 season in Cleveland and ended it with the Cincinnati Bengals, was added to the AFC roster for next week’s Pro Bowl, the team announced Friday. It marked the first Pro Bowl selection of the veteran quarterback’s 18-year career.
Flacco will join former Browns teammate Shedeur Sanders, the 2025 fifth-round pick who was added to the AFC roster Monday, as a fellow replacement.
Flacco won a training camp battle that included Sanders and 2025 third-round pick Dillon Gabriel to begin the season as the Browns’ starting quarterback. He started four games, completing 58.1 percent of his passes for 815 yards, two touchdowns and six interceptions before getting replaced by Gabriel after a 1-3 start.
The Browns eventually traded Flacco to the Bengals, who needed a starter after backup Jake Browning struggled after Joe Burrow’s Week 2 injury, for a sixth-round pick in early October, and he started Cincinnati’s next six games. The Bengals went 1-5 in those games, but Flacco finished with 1,664 yards and 14 touchdowns on 61.7 percent passing for the Bengals with four interceptions. Burrow returned in Week 12 to start the team’s final six games of the season.
Pro Bowl rosters are determined by a combination of one-third fan voting, one-third player voting and one-third coach voting. Selected players can decline to participate, and none of the three quarterbacks — Drake Maye (New England Patriots), Josh Allen (Buffalo Bills) and Justin Herbert (Los Angeles Chargers) — on the AFC’s initial roster will suit up next week in the Bay Area. Maye is preparing to face the Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Feb. 8, Allen said earlier this week that he played with a broken bone in his right foot during the playoffs, and Herbert fractured a hand late in the season but played in the wild-card round.
The Pro Bowl was moved to Super Bowl week for the first time this year and is scheduled for Tuesday night at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Coverage will begin on ESPN at 6:30 p.m. ET, with the AFC-NFC flag football game beginning at 8 p.m. ET.