{"id":871656,"date":"2026-04-22T05:27:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/871656\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:27:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:27:16","slug":"how-a-shedeur-sanders-prank-call-forced-significant-changes-to-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/871656\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Shedeur Sanders prank call forced significant changes to NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Browns<\/a> QB Shedeur Sanders<\/a> is now settling in preparing for his second season in the NFL.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Sanders took the majority of first team reps as Cleveland held their first session of voluntary OTAs, with Deshaun Watson also getting reps with the starters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But last year at this time, Sanders \u2014who nearly every NFL talent evaluator had pegged as a first round pick \u2014 was prepping for the draft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And when the 2025 NFL Draft came around, the entire country watched the first round pass without Sanders hearing his name called. It continued all the way to the fifth round, when the Cleveland Browns<\/a> finally selected Sanders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are always players who slide during the draft, but this one felt unprecedented. Absolutely nobody had the former Colorado star QB slipping to the fifth round.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To make things worse, Sanders received a call on the second night of the 2025 NFL Draft that he believed was from Saints<\/a> GM Mickey Loomis. It turned out to be a prank call from the son of Jeff Ulbrich, the defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[I have] been waiting on you,\u201d Sanders said on the call, which was documented in a livestream. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have to wait a little bit longer,\u201d the caller replied and hung up the call. Sanders was visibly confused. \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d he asked on the livestream<\/p>\n

Due to the unfortunate incident, and other players like Abdul Carter and Kyle McCord also reporting they were prank called on draft night, the NFL has implemented a new system to prevent these incidents moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The relevant contact information will be provided by the league to a single point of contact at the club in football operations,\u201d an NFL spokesman told\u00a0The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cThis individual will be responsible for safeguarding the numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to reports, Ulbrich\u2019s son found Sanders\u2019 contact information on an iPad that belonged to his dad or the Falcons. The NFL ultimately fined the Falcons $250,000 and another $100,00 for Ulbrich.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see if the new protocols actually prevent these kinds of pranks from happening on draft night moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More Browns news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleveland Browns QB Shedeur Sanders is now settling in preparing for his second season in the NFL.\u00a0 On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-871656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-browns","11":"tag-clevelandbrowns","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116446707312647428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}