Houston Texans quarterback CJ Stroud earns Pro Bowl bid

Houston Texans rookie CJ Stroud has earned a bid to the 2024 Pro Bowl this weekend, the team announced on Tuesday. The star quarterback is just the second Texans rookie on offense to make a Pro Bowl roster in franchise history. He’ll join fellow rookie Will Anderson Jr. at the Pro Bowl festivities in Orlando, as well as his starting left tackle Laremy Tunsil.

Stroud is replacing Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes who is now through to Super Bowl LVIII with his Chiefs. The other AFC quarterbacks on the Pro Bowl roster are Tua Tagovailoa and Lamar Jackson.

Stroud finished the regular season with 4,108 passing yards and 23 touchdowns while only throwing five interceptions. He connected on 63.9% of his passes and shattered multiple records throughout his debut campaign. Against the Browns and Ravens in the playoffs, he went 16-for-21 and 19-for-33 while throwing three interceptions, all of which came against Cleveland.

All eyes were on the former Buckeye to start the year as he racked up 192 consecutive pass attempts without an interception, which was the most ever by a player to begin a career. He ended the year with the league’s most passing yards per game (273.9), and he also had the league’s best touchdown-interception ratio (4.60), joining only Joe Montana and Tom Brady to top the league in both in a single season.

Stroud’s passing yards total trailed only one former NFL quarterback’s rookie record, Andrew Luck‘s 4,662 yards, which he threw for the Colts in 2012. Among the records he broke this season, the first-rounder set a new rookie single-game passing record and rookie single-game touchdown record with his 470-yard and five-touchdown game against the Buccaneers.

The Houston Texans drafted Stroud with the No. 2 overall selection in the 2023 NFL Draft out of Ohio State. He was fresh off of a trip to the national championship, a game in which he threw for 348 yards and four touchdowns.

Pro Bowl hits Orlando

The NFL Pro Bowl is back in Orlando this year. The game is going to be held at Camping World Stadium, better known as the Citrus Bowl, on February 4, 2024. Held at Allegiant Stadium the last two seasons in Las Vegas, the Pro Bowl was played at Camping World Stadium for four seasons, though the 2021 game was canceled due to the pandemic.

Notably, this is going to be a new version of the Pro Bowl. Instead of a traditional football game, the conference will be playing flag football to avoid injuries and make the game more exciting to watch. It’s an experience that the players greatly prefer.

The NFL feels good about the new format, which includes a skills event and the flag football game. In Orlando, the league is going to find out if that idea worked last year as a novelty or if it has more staying power.