The Broncos have been consistently snubbed by NFL awards and the 2019 season has underlined that fact, with Justin Simmons and Courtland Sutton both missing the Pro Bowl initially and Randy Gradishar not being named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Centennial Class.
Fortunately, one of those mistakes will be at least partially corrected as Sutton will be heading to Orlando for the Pro Bowl in place of Texans’ receiver DeAndre Hopkins.
This will be Sutton’s first Pro Bowl but it will be the Broncos’ second Pro Bowl player to come out of the 2018 class already, joining Phillip Lindsay from a season ago. That makes the Broncos just one of five teams with two Pro Bowlers in their 2018 class already, and it’d be surprising if Bradley Chubb didn’t join Lindsay and Sutton sooner rather than later.
Sutton’s Pro Bowl season, in which he gained over 1,100 yards and hauled in six touchdowns, is made even more impressive by Denver’s shallow receiving core, porous offensive line and a quarterback carousel that featured two untested passers.
As of now, Sutton is slated to join Von Miller as the only Broncos in Orlando. He’ll line up in an almost exclusively AFC West receiving core with Tyreek Hill, Keenan Allen and Jarvis Landry, as he catches passes from Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. That’s an elite lineup, but it’s likely to undergo some heavy changes as the Chiefs are favored to make their first Super Bowl appearance in half a century and it’s hard to imagine the Ravens green-lighting the idea of Jackson taking meaningless hits in the Pro Bowl.
If Sutton is good enough to make the Pro Bowl in this tumultuous season, he should be a favorite to make the AFC squad in just about every other season going forward.