Patriots Pro Bowl Snubs? These Two Players Deserved Recognition

The rosters for the 2024 Pro Bowl Games were announced Wednesday night. Unsurprisingly, they featured zero New England Patriots.

It’s possible some Patriots players could be called in to participate as alternates. But this marked the first time since 2000 that Bill Belichick’s team did not have a single Pro Bowl representative voted in.

Not so coincidentally, this also is the first season since 2000 in which the Patriots finished last place in the AFC East. They sit at 4-12 entering Sunday’s season finale against the New York Jets and simply lack roster talent, especially since several of their best players (Matthew Judon, Christian Gonzalez, Rhamondre Stevenson, etc.) had their seasons cut short by injuries.

But that doesn’t mean the Patriots had no players worthy of Pro Bowl consideration. In our view, their roster features two legitimate snubs who would not have been out of place on the AFC squad. Naturally, given where the strength of this team lies, both are defensive players.

S Jabrill Peppers
Though he called teammate Kyle Dugger the best safety in the NFL, Peppers had the better season of the two — and the best of his NFL career to date. The brash, hard-hitting 28-year-old was a menace in run defense and a turnover magnet. He was directly involved in at least five of New England’s 17 takeaways (two interceptions, one forced fumble, one fumble recovery, one hit that created an INT) and played nearly every defensive snap before a hamstring injury sidelined him for the last two games.

Entering Week 18, Pro Football Focus had Peppers as the NFL’s fifth-highest-graded safety and second-highest-graded run defender at the position, trailing only Tampa Bay’s Antoine Winfield Jr. He lost out to Denver’s Justin Simmons, Pittsburgh’s Minkah Fitzpatrick and Baltimore’s Kyle Hamilton.

DL Christian Barmore
Coming off an injury-derailed sophomore season, Barmore emerged as a game-wrecker around mid-October and only ascended from there. The 2021 second-round pick makes impact plays on a weekly basis and is a much more well-rounded player than he was in ’21 or ’22. He’s eighth among interior defenders in PFF grade and sixth in pass-rush grade.

Barmore has the traditional counting stats, too, with eight sacks, 11 tackles for loss, 15 quarterback hits and six pass breakups entering Sunday’s finale. Nearly all of his production came from Week 6 on, and the final game before players and coaches cast their Pro Bowl ballots was the best of his career: a three-sack tour de force in a primetime Christmas Eve win at Denver.

It’s hard to argue with the three AFC D-tackles who did make the cut, as Kansas City’s Chris Jones, Baltimore’s Justin Madubuike and the Jets’ Quinnen Williams all put up similar or better numbers (and Jones and Madubuike did so on much better teams). But at just 24 years old, Barmore should be in the Pro Bowl conversation for years to come.