Did the Falcons receive lenience for the Shedeur Sanders prank
After the Falcons confessed a week ago today that the trick call made during the draft to quarterback Shedeur Sanders traces back to protective planner Jeff Ulbrich, lots of in the league wondered whether the Falcons would get a pass.They didn’t. The team was fined $250,000. Ulbrich personally was fined $100,000. (When comparing the respective holdings of the Falcons and Ulbrich, among those punishments injure a lot more than the other.)
The concern is whether the league went simple on the Falcons. More particularly, whether it went much easier than it would have gone on other teams.The key here is Rich McKay. Currently the group’s CEO, he’s likewise the veteran chairman of the NFL’s Competition Committee. Some suspect he adroitly steers the agenda in the instructions of the things the Commissioner wants. Which, if so, makes him very valuable to the league office.It also can
be available in helpful when it’s time for the Falcons to take their medicine.
It began 10 years earlier, when the Falcons were caught red-handed for piping fake crowd sound into the Georgia Dome. The penalty for this considerable competitive breach was just a $350,000 fine, a fifth-round choice, and a “short-lived” suspension of McKay from the Competitors Committee. (In contrast, the 49ers lost a 2025 fifth-round choice for a clerical error.)
In 2023, the Falcons got a total fine of $100,000 ($75,000 for the group, $25,000 for previous head coach Arthur Smith) for failing to disclose that running back Bijan Robinson had a health problem that relegated him to a cameo appearance in a Week 7 game against the Buccaneers. Offered the explosion of prop bets and dream football, and because of Robinson’s importance to such bets, hiding the health problem jeopardized lots of legal wagers.In 2024, a$
300,000 charge resulted ($250,000 for the Falcons, $50,000 for G.M. Terry Fontenot) from tampering with 3 different players: Kirk Cousins, Darnell Mooney, and Charlie Woerner. The league also took another fifth-round from the Falcons. (It was, honestly, one of the most blatant examples of tampering during the 52-hour negotiating window that we have actually ever seen.)
All three of those violations have a potentially considerable competitive impact. The punishments, frankly, don’t appear to objectively fit the crimes.
As to the Shedeur Sanders prank call, it was more about the bad appearance the circumstance created. Although the NFL (for some reason) sent out Sanders’s contact information directly to approximately 2,000 people.The NFL, in fining the Falcons and Ulbrich, harped on the disclosure of “private “information. Which serves only to prove the point made previously this week. The ability of Ulbrich’s son to acquire “personal” details regarding Sanders invites speculation as to other “personal” info Ulbrich’s boy (and other member of the family of other group employees) may be getting, and using. Especially when it comes to gambling.It’s difficult to know whether a team besides the Falcons would have gotten a harsher punishment for the Shedeur Sanders prank call, due to the fact that there’s no precedent for it. If it ever occurs again, there will unquestionably be a much stronger sanction, because among the goals of the Falcons’ punishment is to scare everybody else straight.It’s likewise impossible to know whether the explanation provided by the Falcons– that Ulbrich’s boy just happened to be visiting his parents and simply took place to notice an”open iPad”that simply took place to be displaying the Wednesday, April 23 email with Sanders’s telephone number and simply took place to have an unexpected impulse in that moment to jot down the number for the purposes of making a trick contact Friday, April 25– holds true. It seems hassle-free. Frankly, it appears fishy. It looks like there’s more to the story about whether and to what degree Ulbrich’s 21-year-old child had direct access to emails and other confidential information on official iPads and/or e-mail accounts. Still, regarding the all-important concern of what Jeff Ulbrich knew and when he understood it, the Falcons’official explanation is that Ulbrich was Sgt. Schulz.And maybe that’s where the reality regarding the Falcons’ punishment is subtly hiding. If the Falcons’ description holds true, and given that the league foolishly sent out Sanders’s update number to the nearly 2,000 individuals(including Ulbrich)who get the day-to-day deal report, $350,000 in fines appears like an extreme penalty. If the reality about Ulbrich’s boy’s access to secret information is something besides a series of accidentally-threaded needles, the penalty seems light.Given the history of the league office’s lenience with the Falcons, we’ll let others decide whether they were penalized stiffly for a largely innocent gaffe– or whether they were provided a softer penalty for something more deliberate than a chain of sitcom-style coincidences.