Can we just have a few minutes peace?
Well, we had all but 24 hours to enjoy the Atlanta Falcons’ pretty-good 2025 draft class before the team got wrapped up in something stupid.
During the 2025 NFL Draft news gained traction on social media about how former Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the son of Falcons’ great Deion Sanders, was pranked called by someone pretending to be Mickey Loomis, general manager of the New Orleans Saints.
Folks either though it was funny or thought it was classless, but it just appeared to be somehow, someone randomly got ahold of Sanders’ new phone number that was reportedly only given to NFL executives for draft purposes. Come Sunday morning, thanks to what appears to be social media detectives, and in part due to a video of the pranksters being released, speculation quickly grew that one of the pranksters taking part was that of Falcons’ defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son, Jax Ulbrich. And it turns out, that has now been confirmed as true.
The Falcons have since released a statement on the matter.
Earlier in the week, Jax Ulbrich, the 21-year-old son of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parent’s home and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call. Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the data exposure or any facets of the prank and was made aware of the above only after the fact.
The Atlanta Falcons do not condone this behavior and send our sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family, who we have been in contact with to apologize to, as well as facilitate an apology directly from Jax to the Sanders family.
We have also been in contact with the NFL and will continue to cooperate fully with any inquiries we may receive from the NFL league office.
We are thoroughly reviewing all protocols, and updating if necessary, to help prevent an incident like this from happening again.
Soon after, Ulbrich’s son released an apology.
On Friday night I made a tremendous mistake. Sheduer, what I did was completely inexcusable, embarrassing, and shameful. I’m so sorry I took away from your moment, it was selfish and childish. I could never imagine getting ready to celebrate one of the greatest moments of your life and I made a terrible mistake and messed with that moment. Thank you for accepting my call earlier today, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Sanders reportedly has taken the situation well saying he wasn’t really bothered by the prank call. “It didn’t really have an impact on me,” Sanders said, “because it was just like, I mean, OK, like I don’t feed into negativity or I don’t feed into that stuff. You’ve seen on Deion [Sanders] Jr.’s YouTube video. My reaction to it, I don’t — it is what it is. I think of course it is childish. Of course, I feel like it was a childish act, but everybody does childish things here and there.”
As this is ongoing, it’s hard to really comment on the situation. Adam Schefter recently shared that the team will not take any disciplinary action against Jeff Ulbrich and that they are continuing to review their protocols to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Additionally, it appears that now Indianapolis Colts tight end Tyler Warren was also the victim of a prank call, and there may be others, but it’s unclear if Ulbrich’s son is connected to this.
I know some folks find this to be a harmless prank by a couple of 21-year-olds and some find it very immature and flat-out mean. Regardless of what you think about Shedeur Sanders, prank-calling him on one of the most important days of his life, as he free-falls further than expected—that’s pretty low. I’m not here to tell you how to think though, that’s up to you. I will say it’s not a great look for the team or for Jeff Ulbrich, and although he won’t be punished as Schefter reported, I’m sure the national attention and embarrassment surrounding the situation is enough.