Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- One of football's most controversial figures, Brendan Sorsby, is drawing attention from NFL general managers just months after a major off-field incident.
- Sorsby could become available through a rarely-used league mechanism that would allow teams to acquire him without traditional draft capital.
- One veteran GM believes the Eagles might seize this opportunity to dramatically reshape its quarterback depth chart before the 2026 season.
One of the most important people in all of football this year is Brendan Sorsby. He’s the quarterback who transferred from Cincinnati to Texas Tech in January and got popped for sports betting four months later. That puts Tech in a big hole, and now his career is in limbo … But it’s 2026, so that means it’s not completely over.
On Tuesday, Jason La Confora had a bold predictions piece where he said that some general managers think that the Eagles will try to get Sorsby in the supplemental draft. Maybe you’re asking, “Who is Brendan Sorsby?” “What is a Supplemental Draft?” and/or “Why would the Eagles do that?” I got the answers for you.
What’s Brendan Sorsby’s deal?
To put it plainly, he’s an idiot. He’s just a kid, but he’s an idiot. As a fellow idiot, I might even call him a prodigy-level idiot. It’s an impressive thing that he’s got going on.
At the end of April, ESPN reported that the NCAA was investigating Sorsby for some sports betting. It turns out that indeed, there was sports betting, and there was a whole lot of it.
Apparently, while he was at Indiana, he was betting on the NBA, PGA, MLB, Tennis, Romanian soccer, and most importantly, Indiana football.
He put 40 bets on Indiana between Sept. 2 and Oct. 22, 2022 (he was 18 years old at the time). That team ended the season with a 4-8 ATS record, so he wasn’t even actually good at betting either, which doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it is notable.
Regardless, all of this is a massive no-no. He got banned from the NCAA, and now he’s doing some kind of appeal process that probably won’t work. That messes up his eligibility for the 2027 draft (we’ll get to why that’s important in a second).
Before transferring to Texas Tech in January, he spent the last two years as the starting quarterback at the University of Cincinnati. In 24 games there, he had a completion percentage of 61.4%, threw for over 5,600 yards, 45 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,027 yards and 18 touchdowns. The dude is a really good quarterback, and he was set up to have a really good year in Lubbock.
But that’s not going to happen. If/when he doesn’t get his eligibility back, his best move will be to enter the Supplemental Draft.
What is the supplemental draft?
If you don’t know a whole lot about the Supplemental Draft, you’re right. It’s not something you should know about. The last player to be picked from a supplemental draft was Jalen Thompson in 2019, so it’s not something that’s been used since the Pandemic.
The idea is that it’s a draft for underclassmen who didn’t declare for the actual draft in time, or for guys who had some kind of disciplinary or academic problems that mess with their eligibility … like a guy who gets banned from playing college football for gambling.
For all intents and purposes, it’s a draft for ding dongs … and Brendan Sorsby is unequivocally a real ding dong.
The way guys are picked is different from the real draft, too. This is a blind auction, and teams bid their draft picks for the next year. It gets split into three groups that I will hereby name Terrible, Bad, and Good.
Terrible teams are teams that had fewer than six wins in the prior season. Bad teams are teams that had more than six wins, but didn’t make it to the playoffs. Good teams are the teams that made it to the playoffs.
Terrible teams all enter the auction first and tell the NFL which draft pick for the next year that they’d be willing to lose. If you place the highest bid, then you get the player, and you lose that pick. Every other team that enters a bid that doesn’t win doesn’t lose that pick. If the terrible teams don’t make a bid, then it goes to the bad teams, then to the good teams.
If Sorsby’s 2026 season went like his 2024 and 2025 seasons, he’d probably end up being drafted in the first or second round of the draft. So if a team like the Cardinals or the Browns wanted to toss a third-round pick in for their bid, they could be getting a deal.
For the Eagles to have a shot at Sorsby, it means that a whole lot of teams (at least 18 teams) are going to have to put in exactly zero bids. So, for some execs to say that they think the Eagles would be a team to watch? Well … they either have no idea how this whole thing works, or they think a whole bunch of teams want absolutely nothing to do with this kid …
But let’s play along and say that they’re right and Sorsby would fall to the last tier of teams.
What would he do for the Eagles?
Howie Roseman and the Eagles have built a beautiful roster, and a lot of that is because of Roseman’s job security. He’s able to trade away guys like Haason Reddick and A.J. Brown for draft picks that he won’t see for a couple of years because he knows that he’ll be around when it’s time to use them.
He’s able to do that because he’s good at his job, and he’s good at his job because he’s able to do that. It’s a beautiful system that keeps him ready for anything.
Roseman exercised Carson Wentz’s fifth-year option and gave him a four-year extension on April 19th, 2019. On April 24th, 2020, he drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round. It seemed like a real doofus move at the time … But it ended up being the most perfect move ever, and on March 17th, 2021, he traded Wentz to the Colts.
Now, there’s no reason to compare the performance of Wentz in 2019 and 2020 to Jalen Hurts, but let’s think about the construction of the quarterback room.
In 2020, the room was 41-year-old Josh McCown, 27-year-old Nate Sudfeld (who was going into the last year of his rookie contract), 28-year-old Carson Wentz, and 23-year-old rookie Jalen Hurts.
By the time the 2026 season starts, the room will be 38-year-old Andy Dalton, 26-year-old Tanner McKee (who is going into the last year of his rookie contract), 28-year-old Jalen Hurts, and 23-year-old rookie Cole Payton.
That’s essentially the same thing, age and career-wise. You think that Howie is going to be totally cool with the potential future of his franchise being a fifth-round rookie (Payton)? I don’t.
If there’s even a tiny possibility that he could get a high-caliber quarterback for, let’s say, a 2027-fifth-round pick that he just got from New England … You have to think he would do that.
As for the gambling part of that? I think that’s a massive red flag. Jeffrey Lurie got Michael Vick in 2009, and what he did was significantly worse than gambling. Sorsby is just a doofus 22-year-old, and he’d straighten up after spending five minutes in a room with Hurts, Dalton, and McKee.
All I’m saying is that if Brendan Sorsby somehow makes it to the Eagles in the Supplemental draft and Big Dom decides he’s not a total piece of trash, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Howie Roseman turns on the generator, flicks the light switch, and gets the Quarterback Factory churning again.
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