The NFL is tightening access to prospects’ contact information after the prank call to Shedeur Sanders during the 2025 NFL Draft, a reminder that even the league’s carefully managed spectacle can leak through its own cracks. According to The Athletic, the league is now limiting access to prospects’ contact information to one person within each franchise. A league spokesman said, "The relevant contact information will be provided by the league to a single point of contact at the club in football operations." He added, "This individual will be responsible for safeguarding the numbers."
Who Controls the List
The new restriction puts the league even more firmly in charge of who gets access to the personal contact information of draft prospects. The spokesman’s language makes the chain of control plain: the league provides the numbers, and one designated person inside each club is tasked with guarding them. In other words, the apparatus that already controls the draft is now tightening the gate after a public embarrassment exposed how flimsy its internal safeguards were.
The move comes after Sanders was prank called as he slid down the draft board last April. As Sanders fell out of the first round, and then went unselected in the second and third rounds on Day 2, he was called by Jax Ulbrich, the son of Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich. Jax Ulbrich had written down Sanders’ phone number from his father’s open iPad while visiting home.
Who Pays for the Mess
The fallout landed on people already inside the league’s hierarchy, while the league itself responded by centralizing access even further. Jeff Ulbrich later apologized for his son’s actions and said he also shouldered blame for the leaked phone number in the first place. At a news conference at the Falcons' facility, Ulbrich said, "My actions of not protecting confidential data were inexcusable." He added, "My son's actions were absolutely inexcusable, and for that we are both deeply sorry."
The NFL fined the Falcons $250,000 and Jeff Ulbrich was docked $100,000. The numbers are a tidy little reminder of how the league disciplines its own when the spectacle gets messy: a fine here, a fine there, and the machine keeps moving.
The Draft Machine Keeps Rolling
The prank call became a viral moment because Sanders was live-streaming a draft party with his family and friends when he got the call from someone impersonating New Orleans Saints GM Mickey Loomis before the No. 40 overall pick the team owned. The Saints were among teams in the quarterback market heading into the draft, but they did not select one in the first round. Instead, they settled on Louisville’s Tyler Shough in the second round.
Other quarterback-needy teams had already made their choices on day one. The Tennessee Titans selected Cam Ward with the No. 1 pick, and the New York Giants selected Jaxson Dart at No. 25. Sanders would have to wait until the fifth round to be taken by the Cleveland Browns, who also selected Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel in the third round the day prior.
The whole episode shows how the draft operates as a controlled hierarchy, with prospects waiting on decisions made far above them while teams, league officials, and franchise staff manage access, information, and outcomes. When the system’s own internal handling of private data fails, the response is not less control but more of it: one point of contact, more safeguarding, and the same draft machine carrying on as before.