League initially suggested that access to the number was significantly limited
The NFL has recently come under scrutiny after the phone number of Shedeur Sanders was leaked, leading to fines for the Atlanta Falcons and defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.
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However, new details reveal that the league’s narrative may not tell the whole story. The NFL initially claimed that the number was sent to a limited group of people on each team via a confidential email, and that the Falcons took a risk by sharing it with Ulbrich. However, this claim is misleading.
First, let’s consider the implausibility of the NFL’s explanation. The Falcons had no reason to share Sanders’s phone number with Ulbrich, especially since they weren’t planning to draft him.
Why would the Falcons pass on a quarterback’s contact information to a defensive coordinator, particularly when he wasn’t involved in the decision-making process regarding quarterbacks? The story just doesn’t add up.
The facts, however, tell a different story. The league sent the number directly to Ulbrich in an email, which contained only one piece of information: Sanders’s phone number. This email was part of the same daily transaction report, known as the waiver wire, that goes out to a wide distribution of people across the league.
According to sources, even equipment managers received the email, meaning it was sent to around 60 individuals per team. With 32 teams in the league, that’s roughly 1,920 people who had access to Sanders’s phone number.
So while the NFL initially downplayed the situation, it was their actions that created the conditions for the leak. The controversy escalated when it was revealed that the prank call to Sanders came from Ulbrich’s 21-year-old son, Jax.
After apparently seeing an open iPad at his parents’ home, Jax reportedly discovered Sanders’s phone number in the email. Rather than walking away, he decided to write it down and later use it to prank call Sanders.
This explanation raises several questions. How likely is it that Jax “unintentionally” found the number and immediately decided to prank call Sanders?
Could there have been more to the story, such as Jax having prior access to his dad’s iPad or email? With so many people receiving the number, perhaps there was a misguided sense of anonymity, leading some to think that it wouldn’t be a big deal to use the number for a prank. But, as we’ve seen, it wasn’t harmless at all and resulted in a major controversy.
Ultimately, the NFL played a key role in creating the circumstances that led to this incident. By sending Sanders’s phone number to nearly 2,000 people across the league, they made it far too easy for the information to get into the wrong hands.
