I have some more to follow up on a few days after the draft, so here are some Tuesday notes …
Brendan Sorsby
Maybe the 2026 quarterback class isn’t yet complete?
On Monday, Texas Tech announced that its big-money addition at the position, Brendan Sorsby, would be taking leave from the football team to enter rehab for a gambling addiction. The decision came upon the discovery that Sorsby had placed thousands of bets through a gambling app on a variety of sports. Per Pete Thamel at ESPN, those wagers included bets on Indiana football in 2022, when Sorsby was on the roster there.
NCAA guidelines put into effect in 2023 dictate that “student-athletes who wager on their own games or on other sports at their own schools” face “permanent loss of collegiate eligibility in all sports.” So this appears to be a pretty cut-and-dried case, particularly when you consider the importance of the NCAA setting precedent in ones like this.
I asked around with a few guys I know who work in college football, and a few who cover it, and all believed that the NCAA would most likely revoke Sorsby’s eligibility. Sorsby could then file a lawsuit and seek an injunction that would allow him to play for the Red Raiders, who just landed him after the quarterback starred for two years at Cincinnati.
Or Sorsby could go pro.
The supplemental draft has, of late, become obsolete, because the transfer portal gives options to players without a home, NIL gets those players the money they could once only land in the pros (by rule, anyway), and the jig that the NCAA cares about a football players’ academic fate is up. In fact, the past two summers, the exercise, which usually takes place in early July, was canceled because no players declared for it.
Now, Sorsby could pump life into it. Let’s say the likely outcome happens, and Sorsby is declared ineligible by the NCAA. Since he’s set to make around $5 million at Texas Tech this season, maybe he’d decide it’s worth filing a lawsuit and seeking an injunction that allows him to play in 2026—and getting an injunction that would be very iffy, given the very clear rules violation in play. Or maybe he’ll look at it and say it’s time to go to the NFL.
Sorsby has teams that really like him. One NFC coordinator told me Monday that, “From an arm talent standpoint, some of the stuff he does with his arm is similar, and I hate to say it, you hate to make this comparison, to [Patrick] Mahomes and Caleb [Williams]. But he has that twitch, the arm angles of [Matthew] Stafford. His arm is electric. It would’ve been by far the best in this class. Zach Wilson’s arm was that way, extremely talented, too. As a thrower, his arm would be top eight or so in the league.”
“The guy’s pretty good; he would’ve had a good chance of being right there with [Fernando] Mendoza,” said an AFC exec, who watched him on crossover tape. “If he came out in the supplemental, it would depend if you felt like you needed a quarterback. But if the Cardinals think he’s that good, why not take him in the second round? Just from the limited tape I saw, he looked better than Ty [Simpson].”
Now, not everyone is there yet on Sorsby, and these assessments were done without the full vetting and study, which is what quarterback-needy teams would go through ahead of the supplemental draft, were Sorsby to declare. Concerns do exist with his play in the Bearcats’ biggest games, and in particular, rough outings against Nebraska, Utah and Arizona.
Then, there’s what the NFL might do with the whole gambling issue, which is a thorny area for the league, and whether they feel like, with the Terrelle Pryor suspension in 2011 as a precedent, they have to levy some sort of penalty on Sorsby to start his NFL career.
But if you’re the Jets, Browns, Cardinals or Dolphins, might you sink a second-round pick into a quarterback with this sort of ceiling? And if you’re Sorsby, is the prospect of that, and getting to a second contract by 2029 if things work out, enough to make you ditch the college game and avoid all of the legal stuff to go pro?
It’s really interesting, I think, and I know I’m not the only one keeping an eye on it.
Will Anderson Jr.
We’ve got the Will Anderson Jr. contract in, and it’s another reminder of what these deals are—we all report them as extensions, and the players are getting extended, but reality is they’re actually completely new contracts with remaining money on rookie deals folded in.
So, yes, there are three new years, and $150 million in new money on Anderson’s contract, which is a record $50 million per year for a nonquarterback. But the deal that was signed is actually a five-year, $177.064 million deal, with $100.064 million fully guaranteed at signing, and an injury guarantee of $134.064 million.
Anderson will get $55.064 million over the next two years, which is a $28 million raise for those years over what he’d have gotten on his rookie deal. His three-year total is $95.064 million, and all of it but $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses for 2028 is fully guaranteed. His 2029 money is identical to 2028—$39.5 million base salary and $500,000 in per-game roster bonuses—with $5.5 million fully guaranteed, and the entire base guaranteed against injury. Then, in 2030, there’s a $41.5 million base, and the $500,000 in per-game bonuses.
So the cashflow, by year, is $33.14 million, $21.919 million. $40 million, $40 million and $42 million; with cap charges of $7.545 million, $28.319 million, $46.4 million, $46.4 million and $48.4 million. Functionally, it gets Anderson a lot more money now, while spreading the damage out from a cash and cap standpoint for the team on what amounts, again, to a totally new contract. Anderson wins. So do the Texans, who get one of the best players in football for what, over the life of the contract, actually amounts to $35.41 million.
Dexter Lawrence II
While we’re there, we have full details now on the deal that Dexter Lawrence II got with the Bengals, after the Giants traded him to Cincinnati for the 10th pick.
This is, indeed, really another entirely new deal. On Lawrence’s old contract with New York, he had a nonguaranteed $20 million for 2026 and $22 million for 2027. On his new deal, he essentially gets a $6 million raise over that time—$21 million this year (he already got a $10 million roster bonus at signing, and has an $11 million base salary), and $25 million next year (an $8.25 million option bonus, $15.5 million base, $250,000 workout bonus and $1 million in per-game roster bonuses).
And then, there’s $23 million due in 2028, via a base salary of $21.75 million, $250,000 workout bonus, and $1 million in per-game roster bonuses.
Now, it is a typical Bengals deal in that only the $10 million roster bonus he’s already collected is fully guaranteed. But the team and Lawrence’s camp got creative in making him whole, putting an $8.25 million fee on there in 2027 for not exercising the $8.25 million bonus, essentially meaning he’ll get that money either way. The cap charges are standard, too, rising over the course of the deal: $14.33 million, $24.21 million and $30.46 million.
In the end, Lawrence gets the raise the next two years, the extra $27 million in total cash, and the Bengals get the extra year of contractual control.
Carnell Tate
We dug through the first three picks of the draft pretty thoroughly over the past week, but I think where the Titans were at No. 4 was pretty interesting, too, since most folks didn’t see the team going the way they did with Robert Saleh in as the new coach.
The decision, I’ve heard, really came down to two Ohio State Buckeyes who’d bring very different things to the table: receiver Carnell Tate and linebacker Arvell Reese.
The jumping off point here is that the Titans had Tate in the mid-4.4s in the 40-yard dash at the combine, significantly ahead of the 4.53 that the electric clock got him at. And beyond just the straight-line speed, Tennessee saw Tate as a real craftsman as a route runner—which isn’t common with taller, longer guys, and one who could win on all three levels. So, yes, you had the downfield stuff Tate was known for, but what Tennessee was really sold on was that he could also win in short areas, and on contested balls, on third down and in the red zone.
Essentially, he has some traits of a smaller guy with the length and catch radius to make the bigger plays outside the numbers and down the field, which would help bring to life the arm talent that Cam Ward brings to the table. Also, where some people looked at the fact that Tate wasn’t ever the No. 1 at Ohio State, playing with Jeremiah Smith the past two years, Tennessee saw it as a positive, proof that a guy with traits of a No. 1 could blend into a team.
The black-and-white reality of this: Tate was clearly the top receiver on the Titans’ board, and the top player remaining at No. 4. And while they liked Reese (Sonny Styles was behind Tate and Reese), for about a week leading up to the draft, the brass knew if things played out the way they did, Tate would be the pick. I’d also keep an eye on second-round pick Anthony Hill Jr. as doing some things that they’d have envisioned Reese doing in the Titans’ defense.
Jordyn Tyson
As for the other top-10 pick at receiver, the Saints’ decision to pull Jordyn Tyson off the board at No. 8 was one born of a full year of work—and trust in Tyson as a person.
Over the course of the past year, New Orleans had assistant GM Jeff Ireland, senior personnel advisor Randy Mueller, national scout Terry Wooden and area scout Mike Di Julio go through Tempe on school calls. They met with him after the Sun Devils’ first pro day in March, brought him to New Orleans on a 30 visit and sent receivers coach Keith Williams to ASU for Tyson’s personal pro day the Friday before the draft.
The consensus after all that: Tyson is a great kid, who is going to, in time, put it all together.
That was important, too, because there is some projection involved. He never finished a college season healthy, and some questioned how tough he played. What the Saints saw, when they drilled down on it, was different. They saw Tyson hitting bad luck with the torn ACL ending his 2022 season at Colorado, and the broken collarbone that ended his 2024 season at ASU. The hamstring injury last year, because it’s soft tissue, was a little more concerning, but there was also evidence there of Tyson fighting through the injury.
The fact that Tyson is the brother of a pro athlete—Jaylon Tyson was the Cavaliers’ first-round pick in 2024, and is in his second NBA season—helped in seeing the bigger picture, too, in that he probably has a pretty good idea of what it takes to make it at the next level.
They also saw him, as a result of all that missed time, as still developmental. Because he didn’t run a 40 or shuttles, or do the jumps, the tape would have to dictate the decision, outside of the 15-or-so routes he ran in Tempe on April 17. And what the Saints saw there was a big, 205-pound wideout, with a well-built lower half and the bone structure to grow, who moved like a 5' 8" slot receiver. So where he’d start as a complement to Chris Olave in New Orleans, there was a great opportunity for him to grow into much more than that.
For what it’s worth, having Olave and Tyson should also help the Saints get a pretty clean read on Tyler Shough, in what figures to be a critical year of evaluation for the quarterback.
Quick hitters
• The Eagles picked up Jalen Carter’s fifth-year option, locking him in for 2027, and how Philly proceeds from here will be fascinating. If the Eagles do a deal with Carter for the long-term, my presumption will be it comes with protection for the team. As it stands now, he’s guaranteed $31 million over the next two years. So he’d likely get those years guaranteed, with a hefty raise. Where the deal goes from there is what will be telling.
And if he doesn’t get extended, that would say even more, since Philly’s generally so aggressive in signing young players early.
• While we’re there, we now have two first-rounders from 2023 signed to big-time, long-term extensions: Will Anderson Jr. and Seahawks star Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Texans QB C.J. Stroud, Seahawks CB Devon Witherspoon, Falcons RB Bijan Robinson, Lions RB Jahmyr Gibbs and LB Jack Campbell, and Patriots CB Christian Gonzalez are among those to keep an eye on, as we move to the part of the calendar where these sorts of contracts get negotiated.
• Tyree Wilson is on the other end of the spectrum with that group, having now washed out of Las Vegas, with the Raiders sending him to the Saints for a fifth-round pick last week. Wilson, at his best, can be a big, long, movable piece for a team’s defensive line, and he fits the rugged mold that New Orleans DC Brandon Staley has for his edge guys. Staley, for what it’s worth, is also very close with the coach who drafted Wilson, Josh McDaniels.
• One interesting note: On some of these new contracts there’s an “if 17 games” proviso written in with the per-game roster bonuses. Which, of course, would imply that there’s a chance there might be more games on a team’s schedule within the life of the contract, to a point where both the team and player are seeking protection against that possibility.
• Finally, we’ve got another owners meeting set for less than a month from now. It’s in Orlando, which, in case you missed it, will be an NFL city in 2027, as the temporary home of the Jaguars.
More NFL from Sports Illustrated
- Diego Pavia’s Viral Lamar Jackson Snub Recirculates After Ravens Sign QB
- Ravens Sign Diego Pavia to Three-Year Deal, Bypassing Rookie Minicamp Tryout
- Matthew Stafford Found the Perfect Offseason Distraction As Rams Draft QB Ty Simpson
- Patriots Players Address Mike Vrabel, Dianna Russini Scandal for First Time After NFL Draft
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The NFL Could Spare Brendan Sorsby From the NCAA’s Gambling Investigation.
