Culture
2025 Pro Bowl Games rosters: Jayden Daniels, Sam Darnold headline first-time participants
Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold and Las Vegas Raiders tight end Brock Bowers headline the list of first timers for the 2025 Pro Bowl Games, which the league announced Thursday.
The Baltimore Ravens lead all teams with nine Pro Bowl selections, while the Detroit Lions (seven players), Minnesota Vikings (six), Philadelphia Eagles (six), Dallas Cowboys (five) and Kansas City Chiefs (five) each placing at least five players on the roster.
The four teams without anyone making the Pro Bowl’s initial roster are the New York Jets, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints and Tennessee Titans.
While he hasn’t participated in the Pro Bowl since 2021, as the Chiefs have won the last two Super Bowls, Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes wasn’t selected for the first time in his seven years as a starter.
This year’s Pro Bowl Games will be held in Orlando, Fla., with the skills challenges occurring over two days at separate locations. The first part of the skills competition will happen in the Nicholson Fieldhouse on UCF’s campus on Jan. 30 and air at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. The second part of the event, including the flag football game, will be at Camping World Stadium on Feb. 2. It will air on ESPN and ABC at 3 p.m. ET.
The NFL added a trivia element to this year’s skills competitions, which include traditional games of dodgeball and tug-of-war. “Passing the test” will have each quarterback answer five trivia questions about other Pro Bowlers from the 2024 season. Correct answers will give passers more time to attempt to hit targets.
Peyton and Eli Manning will coach the AFC and NFC teams again. The NFC defeated the AFC for the second straight year of the Pro Bowl Games in 2024.
Here’s a look at each conference’s initial rosters:
AFC
Offense
*Starter
Quarterback
- Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills*
- Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals
- Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens
Running back
- Derrick Henry, Baltimore Ravens*
- Joe Mixon, Houston Texans
- Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts
Fullback
- Patrick Ricard, Baltimore Ravens*
Wide receiver
- Ja’Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals*
- Jerry Jeudy, Cleveland Browns*
- Nico Collins, Houston Texans
- Zay Flowers, Baltimore Ravens
Tight end
- Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders*
- Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs
Offensive tackle
- Dion Dawkins, Buffalo Bills*
- Laremy Tunsil, Houston Texans*
- Rashawn Slater, Los Angeles Chargers
Offensive guard
- Quenton Nelson, Indianapolis Colts*
- Joe Thuney, Kansas City Chiefs*
- Trey Smith, Kansas City Chiefs
Center
- Creed Humphrey, Kansas City Chiefs*
- Tyler Linderbaum, Baltimore Ravens
Defense
Defensive end
- Myles Garrett, Cleveland Browns*
- Trey Hendrickson, Cincinnati Bengals*
- Maxx Crosby, Las Vegas Raiders
Interior linemen
- Cameron Heyward, Pittsburgh Steelers*
- Chris Jones, Kansas City Chiefs*
- Nnamdi Madubuike, Baltimore Ravens
Outside linebacker
- Nik Bonitto, Denver Broncos*
- T.J. Watt, Pittsburgh Steelers*
- Khalil Mack, Los Angeles Chargers
Inside/middle linebacker
- Roquan Smith, Baltimore Ravens*
- Zaire Franklin, Indianapolis Colts
Cornerback
- Derek Stingley Jr., Houston Texans*
- Patrick Surtain II, Denver Broncos*
- Marlon Humphrey, Baltimore Ravens
- Denzel Ward, Cleveland Browns
Free safety
- Minkah Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Steelers*
Strong safety
- Kyle Hamilton, Baltimore Ravens*
- Derwin James, Los Angeles Chargers
Special teams
Long snapper
- Ross Matiscik, Jacksonville Jaguars*
Punter
- Logan Cooke, Jacksonville Jaguars*
Kicker
- Chris Boswell, Pittsburgh Steelers*
Return specialist
- Marvin Mims Jr., Denver Broncos*
Special teamer
- Brenden Schooler, New England Patriots*
NFC
Offense
Quarterback
- Jared Goff, Detroit Lions*
- Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders
- Sam Darnold, Minnesota Vikings
Running back
- Saquon Barkley, Philadelphia Eagles*
- Jahmyr Gibbs, Detroit Lions
- Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers
Fullback
- Kyle Juszczyk, San Francisco 49ers
Wide receiver
- Justin Jefferson, Minnesota Vikings*
- Amon-Ra St. Brown, Detroit Lions*
- CeeDee Lamb, Dallas Cowboys
- Terry McLaurin, Washington Commanders
Tight end
- George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers*
- Trey McBride, Arizona Cardinals
Offensive tackle
- Lane Johnson, Philadelphia Eagles*
- Penei Sewell, Detroit Lions*
- Tristan Wirfs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Offensive guard
- Landon Dickerson, Philadelphia Eagles*
- Tyler Smith, Dallas Cowboys*
- Chris Lindstrom, Atlanta Falcons
Center
- Frank Ragnow, Detroit Lions*
- Cam Jurgens, Philadelphia Eagles
Defense
Defensive end
- Nick Bosa, San Francisco 49ers*
- Micah Parsons, Dallas Cowboys*
- Rashan Gary, Green Bay Packers
Interior linemen
- Jalen Carter, Philadelphia Eagles*
- Dexter Lawrence, New York Giants*
- Vita Vea, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Outside linebacker
- Jonathan Greenard, Minnesota Vikings*
- Andrew Van Ginkel, Minnesota Vikings*
- Jared Verse, Los Angeles Rams
Inside/middle linebacker
- Fred Warner, San Francisco 49ers*
- Zack Baun, Philadelphia Eagles
Cornerback
- Jaylon Johnson, Chicago Bears*
- Byron Murphy, Minnesota Vikings*
- Jaycee Horn, Carolina Panthers
- Devon Witherspoon, Seattle Seahawks
Free safety
- Xavier McKinney, Green Bay Packers*
Strong safety
- Budda Baker, Arizona Cardinals*
- Brian Branch, Detroit Lions
Special teams
Long snapper
- Andrew DePaola, Minnesota Vikings*
Punter
Kicker
- Brandon Aubrey, Dallas Cowboys*
Return specialist
- KaVontae Turpin, Dallas Cowboys*
Special teamer
- KhaDarel Hodge, Atlanta Falcons*
Required reading
(Photo of Jayden Daniels: Lee Coleman / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
Cold weather can serve as a plot point or emphasize the mood of a scene, and this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the locations of recent novels that work winter conditions right into the story. Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, the questions offer an additional hint about the setting. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
When a writer is praised for having a sense of place, it usually means one specific place — a postage stamp of familiar ground rendered in loving, knowing detail. But Kiran Desai, in her latest novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” has a sense of places.
This 670-page book, about the star-crossed lovers of the title and several dozen of their friends, relatives, exes and servants (there’s a chart in the front to help you keep track), does anything but stay put. If “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” were an old-fashioned steamer trunk, it would be papered with shipping labels: from Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj), Goa and Delhi; from Queens, Kansas and Vermont; from Mexico City and, perhaps most delightfully, from Venice.
There, in Marco Polo’s hometown, the titular travelers alight for two chapters, enduring one of several crises in their passionate, complicated, on-again, off-again relationship. One of Venice’s nicknames is La Serenissima — “the most serene” — but in Desai’s hands it’s the opposite: a gloriously hectic backdrop for Sonia and Sunny’s romantic confusion.
Their first impressions fill a nearly page-long paragraph. Here’s how it begins.
Sonia is a (struggling) fiction writer. Sunny is a (struggling) journalist. It’s notable that, of the two of them, it is she who is better able to perceive the immediate reality of things, while he tends to read facts through screens of theory and ideology, finding sociological meaning in everyday occurrences. He isn’t exactly wrong, and Desai is hardly oblivious to the larger narratives that shape the fates of Sunny, Sonia and their families — including the economic and political changes affecting young Indians of their generation.
But “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” is about more than that. It’s a defense of the very idea of more, and thus a rebuke to the austerity that defines so much recent literary fiction. Many of Desai’s peers favor careful, restricted third-person narration, or else a measured, low-affect “I.” The bookstores are full of skinny novels about the emotional and psychological thinness of contemporary life. This book is an antidote: thick, sloppy, fleshy, all over the place.
It also takes exception to the postmodern dogma that we only know reality through representations of it, through pre-existing concepts of the kind to which intellectuals like Sunny are attached. The point of fiction is to assert that the world is true, and to remind us that it is vast, strange and astonishing.
See the full list of the 10 Best Books of 2025 here.
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