Shedeur Sanders' unexpected fall in the 2025 NFL Draft was easily the biggest storyline of an eventful weekend. After two stellar seasons under his father's tutelage at Colorado, many thought of Sanders as a potential first-round pick. He wound up tumbling all the way to the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round, No. 144 overall.
It was a humbling experience for Sanders, but to his credit, the 23-year-old handled it extremely well. There were cameras at the Sanders house for all three days of the draft, and not once did Sanders express anger or frustration with his situation — only a belief that all will work out as it's meant to.
That said, before the Browns officially took Sanders off the board midway through Day 3, the former Buffs signal-caller was the target of an immature and thoughtless prank call from a couple college students. As it turns out, the culprit was none other than Jax Ulbrich, the son of former New York Jets interim head coach and new Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.
The NFL has since dropped the hammer, fining the Falcons $250,000 and fining Ulbrich an additional $100,000 — over six percent of his annual salary.
The Falcons DC addressed reporters for the first time since the incident on Wednesday. Here were his full comments:
A lot of fans are more focused on what Ulbrich didn't say: I'm sorry, Shedeur.
Falcons DC Jeff Ulbrich forgets to apologize to Shedeur Sanders in first presser since prank call
Now, this may feel a bit pedantic, as Ulbrich notes the immense regret both he and his son share, as well as his praise for Shedeur's gracious handling of the situation. He mentions a phone call between Sanders, his son and himself, during which Ulbrich presumably apologized directly to Sanders. Atlanta's DC also talked openly about the emotional turmoil of the situation, but admits that he "brought it on himself," taking full responsibility for the data breach.
Still, it's a bit wild to go through an entire presser with follow-up questions and to not once say, outright, "I'm sorry to Shedeur and the Sanders family." He got there in a roundabout way, and there's no doubt that Ulbrich feels terribly about the situation, but in this age of online brain rot, subtext is a lost art. Sometimes, for the sake of PR and appeasing a cutthroat fandom, you need to say The Thing straight up, without pretense.
This whole situation was avoidable and the blame extends well beyond Ulbrich. While he shouldn't have left an open iPad with sensitive information lying around, this really falls on his college-aged son, who did something incredibly cruel and alarmingly dumb. It's also on the league for disseminating information this way.
Ulbrich has been sufficiently penalized on the financial front and the Falcons organization has been shrouded in an appropriate amount of shame in recent days. Hopefully this never happens again. This is a reminder to all league personnel to keep your classified docs away from the local frat kids.