During the NFL draft last weekend, the son of a defensive coach for the Atlanta Falcons pranked Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders by calling him and pretending to be the General Manager of a different team and telling him they’d picked him. He then told Sanders he would have to wait longer and said ‘sorry’, before hanging up.
Shedeur Sanders, the son of Deion Sanders, was the biggest story of the NFL draft because he was expected to be picked high in the first round, but because of his poor character and big ego during team interviews, every team passed on him until then 5th round when the Cleveland Browns finally picked him.
It wasn’t a great showing for Sanders but because of the tremendous focus on him, the prank phone call got a ton of media attention and the NFL has decided to levy big fines because of it.
They are fining the defensive coach, whose son who made the prank call, a whopping $100,000:
The NFL has fined the Atlanta Falcons $250,000 and defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich $100,000 in response to Ulbrich’s son’s prank call made to Shedeur Sanders during the NFL draft.
Ulbrich’s 21-year-old son admitted to the prank call and apologized in an Instagram post Sunday. The Falcons said in a statement Sunday that Jax Ulbrich wrote down the number from his father’s open iPad while visiting his parents’ home “to later conduct a prank call.”
The NFL said the fines were for “failing to prevent the disclosure of confidential information distributed to the club in advance of the NFL Draft.”
The Falcons said in a statement, “We appreciate the NFL’s swift and thorough review of last week’s data exposure and the event that transpired due to it. We were proactive in addressing the situation internally and cooperated fully with the league throughout the process, and accept the discipline levied to Coach Jeff Ulbrich and the organization. We are confident in our security policies and practices and will continue to emphasize adherence to them with our staff whether on or off premises.”
It’s insane and I’ll tell you why.
The coach wasn’t part of the prank at all. He simply had the phone number for Sanders on his iPad and when he wasn’t looking, his son copied it down when visiting his home. I could see maybe fining the coach $25,000, but $100,000?? That’s too much money in my opinion.
I get the NFL wants to stop this from happening in the future, but the only way I can see justification for such a fine is if the coach was in on the prank and shared the phone number intentionally.