The NFL just slammed the door on Brendan Sorsby. The league announced Monday that it will not hold a supplemental draft this year, which means the Texas Tech quarterback has no path into the NFL until April 2027. He is essentially a man without a team.
This is harsh. It might also be the right call.
Sorsby’s situation is complicated. The NCAA ruled him ineligible after discovering he had wagered approximately $90,000 on pro and college sports over four years, including 40 bets involving Indiana football when he was a freshman on the team. That is a massive amount of money and a massive amount of bets, and it includes wagers on games involving his own team. The NCAA does not look kindly on that, and neither does the NFL.
With his college eligibility gone, Sorsby applied for the supplemental draft as his only path forward. The league had until June 22 to decide. The deadline came and went with the NFL announcing there will be no supplemental draft this year. Sorsby is stuck.
The league’s reasoning, per reports, is that holding a supplemental draft would become a distraction to teams as they begin training camps. That is a polite way of saying nobody wanted to deal with the gambling baggage. The NFL has been militant about distancing itself from anything involving illegal betting since the Calvin Ridley situation, the Isaiah Rodgers situation, and more recently the Chauncey Billups poker scandal. Bringing in a quarterback who bet on his own team is a headache no GM wants.
This is also the NFL flexing its discretionary power under the collective bargaining agreement. The league does not have to hold a supplemental draft. It only does so when it deems the circumstances appropriate. Apparently, Sorsby’s case did not clear that bar.
From a football standpoint, this is a brutal outcome. Sorsby is a real prospect. He threw for over 3,000 yards last season at Indiana before transferring to Texas Tech. He has prototypical size at 6 foot 3 and a strong arm. Multiple draft analysts had him as a potential Day 2 pick in the 2027 draft if he had a strong season at Tech. Now he sits for a year.
He can still work out. He can still throw. He can still get ready for next April. But there will be no in season tape, no live reps against pressure, no chance to show NFL scouts how he handles being a starting quarterback in a real game. That is a huge developmental loss for a 22 year old quarterback.
Some agents are arguing he should try the XFL, the CFL, or the UFL. Those leagues would give him reps. The problem is that none of those leagues are currently in their season, and the gambling concerns might follow him there too. There is no obvious soft landing.
The harder question is whether Sorsby’s gambling history will ever go away. The NFL has been forgiving to some players and brutal to others. Calvin Ridley got a one year suspension. Isaiah Rodgers got a year. Both eventually returned. Sorsby has not even been in the league yet, so technically there is no league discipline to serve. But the cloud over his name is real, and it will follow him to every interview, every workout, and every team visit between now and the 2027 draft.
Right now, Sorsby’s NFL dream is on ice. He should have thought about that before he started betting.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
