Effectively, we had all however 24 hours to benefit from the Atlanta Falcons’ pretty-good 2025 draft class earlier than the group acquired wrapped up in one thing silly.
Through the 2025 NFL Draft information gained traction on social media about how former Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the son of Falcons’ nice Deion Sanders, was pranked referred to as by somebody pretending to be Mickey Loomis, basic supervisor of the New Orleans Saints.
Of us both although it was humorous or thought it was classless, however it simply seemed to be in some way, somebody randomly acquired ahold of Sanders’ new cellphone quantity that was reportedly solely given to NFL executives for draft functions. Come Sunday morning, because of what seems to be social media detectives, and partly resulting from a video of the pranksters being launched, hypothesis rapidly grew that one of many pranksters collaborating was that of Falcons’ defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son, Jax Ulbrich. And it seems, that has now been confirmed as true.
The Falcons have since launched a assertion on the matter.
Earlier within the week, Jax Ulbrich, the 21-year-old son of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, unintentionally got here throughout the draft contact cellphone quantity for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad whereas visiting his mum or dad’s dwelling and wrote the quantity all the way down to later conduct a prank name. Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the info publicity or any aspects of the prank and was made conscious of the above solely after the actual fact.
The Atlanta Falcons don’t condone this habits and ship our honest apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his household, who we have now been in touch with to apologize to, in addition to facilitate an apology instantly from Jax to the Sanders household.
We now have additionally been in touch with the NFL and can proceed to cooperate totally with any inquiries we might obtain from the NFL league workplace.
We’re totally reviewing all protocols, and updating if needed, to assist forestall an incident like this from occurring once more.
Quickly after, Ulbrich’s son launched an apology.
On Friday evening I made an amazing mistake. Sheduer, what I did was utterly inexcusable, embarrassing, and shameful. I’m so sorry I took away out of your second, it was egocentric and infantile. I might by no means think about on the point of rejoice one of many best moments of your life and I made a horrible mistake and messed with that second. Thanks for accepting my name earlier as we speak, I hope you will discover it in your coronary heart to forgive me.
Sanders reportedly has taken the scenario properly saying he wasn’t actually bothered by the prank name. “It didn’t actually have an effect on me,” Sanders mentioned, “as a result of it was similar to, I imply, OK, like I don’t feed into negativity or I don’t feed into that stuff. You’ve seen on Deion [Sanders] Jr.’s YouTube video. My response to it, I don’t — it’s what it’s. I consider course it’s infantile. In fact, I really feel prefer it was a infantile act, however all people does infantile issues right here and there.”
As that is ongoing, it’s arduous to actually touch upon the scenario. Adam Schefter lately shared that the group is not going to take any disciplinary motion in opposition to Jeff Ulbrich and that they’re persevering with to evaluation their protocols to verify one thing like this doesn’t occur once more. Moreover, it seems that now Indianapolis Colts tight finish Tyler Warren was additionally the sufferer of a prank name, and there could also be others, however it’s unclear if Ulbrich’s son is related to this.
I do know some of us discover this to be a innocent prank by a few 21-year-olds and a few discover it very immature and flat-out imply. No matter what you concentrate on Shedeur Sanders, prank-calling him on some of the essential days of his life, as he free-falls additional than anticipated—that’s fairly low. I’m not right here to let you know the way to assume although, that’s as much as you. I’ll say it’s not an awesome search for the group or for Jeff Ulbrich, and though he received’t be punished as Schefter reported, I’m certain the nationwide consideration and embarrassment surrounding the scenario is sufficient.
