The NFL’s supplemental draft is usually an afterthought during the offseason, but this year the event is going to be taking center stage in July and that’s all thanks to Brendan Sorsby. The Texas Tech quarterback announced on Monday that he’s going to enter the supplemental draft instead of fighting the NCAA in court to keep his college eligibility alive.
Although Sorsby is entering the draft, that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll be selected. He admittedly gambled more than $90,000 over the past four years, including at least 40 bets that he made on Indiana football while he was a member of the team. He also made several other bets while he was underage.
Despite those red flags, the NFL is a forgiving league and most teams will generally be willing to take a risk on a player if that player can help them win. Sorsby is talented and he plays the most important position in football, so it seems like there’s a good chance that at least one team will be willing to grab him in the supplemental draft (And if you’re wondering who might take him, we identified eight potential landing spots here).
After Sorsby gets selected, the next question becomes: Will he face an NFL suspension?
The answer to that question isn’t as clear cut as you might think.
Why Sorsby might not be suspended
Sorby’s situation is unprecedented, so it’s hard to say what the NFL will do, but the league might have given us a hint with how it handled the Kayshon Boutte situation. The Patriots receiver was involved in a similar gambling scandal during his time at LSU and he didn’t end up getting suspended.
Boutte was drafted by the Patriots in April 2023 and nine months later, the Louisiana State Police Gaming Enforcement Division announced some shocking allegations against Boutte. In January 2024, the Patriots receiver was arrested for allegedly placing more than 8,900 wagers while in college, including at least six involving LSU football. Boutte was also underage when he made those bets.
Like Sorsby, he bet on his team, he made a lot of bets and he was underage when he made those bets. Although Boutte was charged with a crime, the state of Louisiana ended up dropping the charges in July 2024. After that, the NFL decided not to punish Boutte, which set a precedent that the league might not punish a player for something that happened when the player wasn’t in the NFL yet.
In January 2026, Boutte offered some details on just how bad his gambling addiction had gotten while he was in college (via The Players’ Tribune).
“I’d wake up early in the morning, and the first thing I’d do was bet” Boutte wrote. “I’d stay up late and bet. All day. All night. I had insomnia, so if I woke up in the middle of the night, phone next to the bed, I’d bet. Any little money I had, it was going straight to FanDuel.”
In that same piece, Boutte said that he knew he “was addicted.”
“I gambled until I was completely broke,” Boutte wrote. “When it was all said and done, I put in around $90,000 of my own money, and lost it all.”
Sorsby has also admitted to being addicted and he even entered a treatment program for gambling addiction.
Although Boutte was admittedly addicted to gambling while in college, he hasn’t had any gambling-related issues since entering the NFL. He has now completed three full seasons and is coming off a Super Bowl appearance with the Patriots.
It’s possible the NFL could go the same route with Sorsby by not punishing him but letting him know that any gambling-related activity will be met with severe punishment.
Why Sorsby could be suspended
Since Roger Goodell took over as NFL commissioner in 2006, there’s only been one instance where a player got punished by the NFL for something that he did while he was in college.
In 2011, Terrelle Pryor was hit with a five-game suspension for NCAA violations that he committed while at Ohio State. Instead of dealing with the suspension, Pryor decided to enter the supplemental draft.
Unfortunately for Pryor, his suspension ended up following him to the NFL. After he was selected by the Raiders, the league announced that Pryor would have to serve a five-game suspension to start his NFL career.
“This smacks of a calculated effort to manipulate our eligibility rules in a way that undermines the integrity of, and public confidence in, those rules,” Goodell said in his decision.
Pryor’s case, which involved trading memorabilia for cash and tattoos at an Ohio tattoo parlor, wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar screen today. However, as Goodell noted, a player trying to manipulate eligibility rules could face punishment, which could open the door for Sorsby to be hit with a suspension.
What makes sense
It’s hard to predict what the NFL is going to do there. The league could easily justify NOT suspending Sorsby by pointing to the Boutte situation. With Boutte, the league worked to educate him about gambling and he’s been able to stay out of trouble, so the NFL might be willing to also give Sorsby the benefit of the doubt.
On the other hand, the NFL could easily justify giving Sorsby a suspension and the league could point to the Pryor case as precedent.
The NFL could also split the difference here. The league could hit Sorsby with a four-to-six-game suspension to send a message that gambling won’t be tolerated.
No matter who drafts him, Sorsby is definitely not going to see the field in his first few weeks of the regular season, so if he’s suspended, the only thing that would really change is that he would lose out on his paycheck, but he’ll be on his rookie deal, so it wouldn’t be a huge sum of money. If he does get suspended, Sorsby would still be allowed to join his team for training camp and for all preseason games, so he’d still get more than six weeks of practice with his new team. Basically, a short suspension wouldn’t have a huge impact on Sorsby, so the suspension would essentially be for show.
The NFL has handed out longer gambling-related suspensions, including Calvin Ridley getting banned for a year, but those suspensions generally involve active players who either bet on NFL games or made bets from an NFL facility and that’s not the situation with Sorsby.
If Sorsby does get suspended — and it’s not a guarantee that it will happen — but if it does, it’s almost impossible to say how long the suspension would be.
