Throw the phone book at him.
At all of them. If the NFL doesn’t levy suspensions against the Atlanta Falcons and their loose-lipped defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, then the fines for their role in the Shedeur Sanders incident had best be legendary.
And don’t tell us to lighten up, Francis. Let’s run this scenario, and you tell me how it plays out at the end in 98% of corporate America.
Say you work for big pharma. Your company’s discovered hair tonic that’ll turn Elmer Fudd into Chris Pine overnight. You’ve got the formula written out in a document on your iPad. You come home. It’s late. You leave said iPad out on the kitchen table while you go to the den to watch Nuggets-Clippers. You forget to shut down said iPad, so now that formula is out there for anybody to read.
While you’re cheering on Aaron Gordon, your son comes down and notices this iPad on the table that’s got a document open on the home screen that says: “TOP SECRET ELMER FUDD HAIR REGROWING FORMULA” written at the top.
Now, say your kid has his own Instagram feed, or a YouTube channel, the way most kids do now.
Your kid wants clicks. Your kid wants subscribers. Your kid wants to be a social media “influencer.” What faster way to rope in a gazillion followers than to sneak into your home studio, turn on the cameras and leak the sure cure for male baldness?
But here’s what happens in the real world after that video goes viral, the way Jax Ulbrich’s did after he prank-called the ex-CU quarterback this past Friday, pretending to be Saints general manager Mickey Loomis:
Your company goes absolutely ballistic.
The lawyers go ballistic.
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They trace the leak all the way back to you — that part isn’t hard — and to the iPad that you left out on the table.
In a lot of cases, you’re fired on the spot. In almost all of them, you’re suspended — and that’s the best-case scenario.
See, the issue here isn’t that a college dude did a dumb, childish thing. It’s that a grown-up, his father, took home confidential information during a weekend when that information was privileged and vital, and treated it the way Homer Simpson would treat nuclear secrets.
It’s that Dad allowed his 21-year-old kid to turn the NFL draft into an episode of “The Howard Stern Show.” For kicks.
You expect Jax to be a doofus. You also expect Jeff to know better.
And you’d expect the Falcons to come up with something stronger than their milquetoast organizational statement on Sunday, in which the Ulbrichs, to their credit, came clean publicly.
“Jax Ulbrich, the 21-year-old son of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parents’ home,” the Falcons’ missive read, “and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call. Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the data exposure or any facets of the prank and was made aware of the above only after the fact.
“The Atlanta Falcons do not condone this behavior and send our sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family, who we have been in contact with to apologize to, as well as facilitate an apology directly from Jax to the Sanders family.”
Prank calls are as old as rotary phones. Pranking NFL rookies is a rite of passage — ex-Iowa star Cooper DeJean, to cite one example, took a fake call during 2024’s draft weekend before finally being selected by the Philadelphia Eagles.
What’s the big deal, then? you ask. It’s happened before.
Exactly. That’s two times too many already.
“People are morons would be my reaction to that,” offered Browns coach Kevin Stefanski, whose team wound up drafting Shedeur in the fifth round on Saturday. “I mean, it’s sad that these young men have to deal with this. That happened a lot in the green room in Green Bay. Guys were getting calls. So it’s silly, but onward and upward.”
But here’s the thing: NFL employees, from GMs to coaches to support staff, are constantly reminded that none of them are bigger than the shield. So if a player takes a political stand, a la Colin Kaepernick, he’s too much of a distraction, but a guy who leaves draft picks’ phone numbers out for his kid to write down is a victim of accidental circumstance? Got it.
Want to nip this in the bud? Make the Ulbrichs an example. A cautionary tale. Now.
“On Friday night, I made a tremendous mistake. Sheduer (sic), what I did was completely inexcusable, embarrassing, and shameful,” Jax Ulbrich wrote in an apology posted to his Instagram feed.
“I’m so sorry I took away from your moment, it was selfish and childish. I could never imagine getting ready to celebrate one of the greatest moments of your life and I made a terrible mistake and messed with that moment. Thank you for accepting my call earlier today, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
Forgive. Always. Forget? Not on your life. Shedeur wasn’t the first. But he better darn well be the last.
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