Browns’ Myles Garrett, Nick Chubb, Joel Bitonio selected to Pro Bowl
BEREA − The Browns will have three players in the Pro Bowl this season.
The NFL announced Wednesday night that defensive end Myles Garrett, left guard Joel Bitonio and running back Nick Chubb have all been selected to participate in the event. It’s the third consecutive season all three have been chosen for the Pro Bowl.
The Browns also had five players selected as alternates. Those players were receiver Amari Cooper, right tackle Jack Conklin, right guard Wyatt Teller, tight end David Njoku and cornerback Denzel Ward.
The Pro Bowl, which will take place Feb. 5 at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, is moving to a new format this season. It will feature a skill competition along with a non-contact flag football game.
Garrett, who is making his fourth Pro Bowl appearance, was the top vote-getter among AFC edge rushers. He’s the first Browns defensive end since Bill Glass to be named to four Pro Bowls.
“I mean it feels like this year it’s stacked all over the board with D-ends who are playing at a very high level and to lead that group, it means a lot,” Garrett said last week. “It’s not guaranteed that I’m able to do that, especially coming off the injury that I have. So being able to still come back, perform at a high level, help win games, all of that means lot.”
Entering Saturday’s game against the New Orleans Saints, Garrett is third in the league with 13.5 sacks. He’s two behind San Francisco’s Nick Bosa for the league lead, and he’s 2.5 sacks behind his single-season franchise record of 16, which he set last season.
Bitonio has entered rarified air among Browns players with his fifth consecutive Pro Bowl appearance. He’s one of nine Browns to be named to that many in a row, joining five Pro Football Hall of Famers in quarterback Otto Graham, running back Jim Brown, guard Gene Hickerson, tackle/kicker Lou Groza and running back Leroy Kelly, as well as tackle and 2023 Hall of Fame semifinalist Joe Thomas, plus guard Jim Ray Smith and tackle Dick Schafrath.
“It’d be an awesome honor, especially for offensive line,” Bitonio said prior to the announcement Wednesday. “You don’t have stats to really back you up and those type of things. So it’s really a way to look back on the season and say like, Hey, I had a successful season. I think you know as a player if you played well or not. And there’s definitely some bias to Pro Bowl voting for lineman, of course but it’s something that you look back on at end of your career, I think. During the season, you’re like, oh, it’s a great accomplishment. But you look back at the end your career and you be like, oh, I made the Pro Bowl a few times and it’s a pretty cool honor.”
The longest-tenured current Browns player, Bitonio has played every snap since the 2016 season. According to Pro Football Focus, his overall grade of 86.7 is second among all guards.
ESPN’s pass-block win rate has Bitonio ranked seventh at 95%.
“It’s definitely part of the puzzle,” Bitonio said. “I think All-Pro is part of the puzzle too. It’s hard with lineman because certain linemen on different teams are asked to do different things. … So it’s a thing, and then you have PFF who, some people say it’s the holy grail of grading offensive lineman, but then you have coaches that hate it. So I think there’s like, it’s not a perfect science and I think you have to look at the whole picture and Pro Bowls, All-Pros matter. I think it is what it is, but PFF is part of the reality in a crazy weird way, because people look at that, especially for linemen and they look and say like, oh this guy’s graded at a certain level so he must be a certain player.”
For Chubb, this marks his fourth consecutive Pro Bowl appearance. Brown and Kelly are the only other Browns running backs to achieve that honor.
Chubb is currently third in the league in both rushing yards with 1,252 and rushing touchdowns with 12, the latter tied with Tennessee’s Derrick Henry. He’s fourth all-time on the Browns’ rushing chart with 6,068 yards.
“Obviously it’d be nice to have that,” Chubb said when asked about the Pro Bowl on Tuesday, “but I’m worried about being here with my teammates and finding a way to win and hopefully carrying on after the regular season.”
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