Tom Pelissero on Chances an NFL Team Uses a 1st-Round Pick on Brendan Sorsby

Any NFL team with a quarterback need, now or down the road, has to do the homework on Brendan Sorsby. The question Tom Pelissero finds fascinating is whether anyone has the guts to spend a first-round pick on him in a supplemental draft.

History says players usually get downgraded in that process. Pelissero reached back to Bernie Kosar, who famously timed his paperwork to land in the supplemental draft in the 1980s before the loopholes were tightened, and to Josh Gordon, who slid because of drug-test issues. The last player taken at all was Jalen Thompson, a safety who has had a strong career and would have gone higher than his effective fifth-round value in a normal draft.

So where does Sorsby land? Pelissero, careful to note he can't give gambling advice, set the over/under right on the second-to-third-round border. It's hard to imagine a player this talented getting past the third round, which raises the real dilemma: if you want him, why not take him in the second? And a team sitting on a late first might just roll the dice.

He ran through the fits. The Browns have two first-rounders next year, but Todd Monken has made his feelings on the Sorsby situation clear, so cross them off. Pelissero floated teams without a settled franchise quarterback, from the Cardinals, who are managing a contract standoff and a one-year Gardner Minshew deal, to the Vikings, with Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy already competing, though he found that one a stretch. The broader point stands: anyone unsure of their long-term quarterback would be foolish not to fully research this. Had Sorsby entered the 2026 draft before any of this, or played the season and gone in 2027, he might well have been a first-round pick.

The logistics are the strange part. There's no date yet, and nobody has even applied, because there hasn't been a supplemental draft in seven years. It used to happen the week after July 4th, but with training camps starting later this year and pads not on until early August, Pelissero expects mid-to-late July. The deadline to apply is June 22nd, and in between Sorsby can meet with teams, hold a pro day, and try to shape the process.

Most teams, Pelissero noted, have already done significant background work, since scouts, college directors, and even some general managers watched Sorsby live unsure whether he'd come out this year or next. Now the head coaches, coordinators, and GMs get more involved. And then comes the most archaic ritual in football: the supplemental draft is conducted by email, with some poor assistant scouting director stuck at a computer waiting to send the bid at the right moment. A process irrelevant for 15 years now has a potential first-round quarterback running through it.