The 2025 Pro Bowl rosters were announced on Thursday morning, and there are always snubs. The biggest of them all may be Detroit Lions safety Kerby Joseph, who leads the league with nine interceptions. Need more? He's allowing a 43.9 percent completion rate in his coverage, he is Pro Football Focus' No. 1-graded safety and his 91.5 PFF coverage grade leads all defensive backs.
Joseph was the first among NFC safeties in the fan segment of Pro Bowl voting. So that means the voting from coaches and players cost him a spot on the NFC roster, with Green Bay Packers free safety Xavier McKinney (second in the league with seven interceptions) getting the nod over him. Arizona Cardinals safety Budda Baker (zero interceptions this season) got one of the nods at safety on the NFC roster over Joseph.
Before Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press reported Wednesday night he didn't make the Pro Bowl, Joseph took to Twitter to reveal his confusion.
— ZUPER BOWL KERB💤😎 (@JKERB25) January 2, 2025
Joseph is a second alternate at safety, which only makes the snub look worse.
Pro Bowl snub will cost Kerby Joseph a lot of money
The NFL has a Collective Bargaining Agreement mechanism called Proven Performance Escalators, which rewards players who were drafted in the second round or later. There are three levels.
Level 1: Is earned if a player participated in a certain percentage of his team's offensive or defensive snaps in two of his first three seasons, or averaged it over three seasons. The percentage is 60 percent for second-round picks or 35 percent for later picks.
Joseph clears this one easily, playing in 77.3 percent of the Lions' defensive snaps as a rookie in 2022, 83.1 percent last year and 98.9 percent so far this season, for an average of 86.4 percent over his three seasons.
Level 2: If the player participates in at least 55 percent of his team's offensive or defensive snaps in each of his first three seasons. His new salary is the amount of the original draft round RFA tender plus $250,000.
Based on what he did to clear Level 1 criteria, Joseph gets this one too and pay raise for 2025.
Level 3: If the player is an original Pro Bowl selection in any of his first three seasons. His new salary is the amount of the second-round RFA tender.
Over The Cap projects a second-round RFA tender for 2025 to be worth $5.217 million. Joseph's current 2025 base salary is $1,357,942. So not being voted to the Pro Bowl roster will cost him $3.5 million.
Joseph is definitely lined up to get a nice contract extension from the Lions, likely this offseason. But the foolishness of tying financial compensation to the results of the voting for honors and awards, in any sport, has been shown yet again.