Tom Pelissero: Why the NFL Denied Brendan Sorsby’s Supplemental Draft Request

While the NBA Draft played out, the bigger draft story might have been the one that will not happen at all. The NFL informed clubs, along with Brendan Sorsby and his agent, that it will not hold a supplemental draft this year, denying Sorsby's petition to enter one. Tom Pelissero broke down why, and the answer comes down to a single word in the collective bargaining agreement: discretion.

The legal rationale, Pelissero explained, is straightforward. The CBA says players whose eligibility changes are eligible for the supplemental draft only if the NFL chooses to hold one. "It is at the sole discretion of the NFL," he said. This is the extremely rare, possibly first-ever, instance of someone applying and the league simply declining to hold the draft.

Pelissero walked through the history most fans do not know. The supplemental draft has been manipulated before, with players sometimes withholding paperwork to avoid a team, and second supplemental drafts once landed right before the season and overshadowed the games. That context matters here. The Sorsby case is genuinely complicated, involving admitted gambling and a compulsion he sought roughly five weeks of treatment for, a failed bid to return to the NCAA, a lawsuit, an injunction to play, and an uproar within the Big 12 that Texas Tech did not have the stomach to fight. With the application deadline on Monday, Sorsby withdrew his lawsuit and applied for the supplemental draft.

The league looked at all of it and landed on a conclusion that stops short of any investigation's findings. Even if the NFL could unpack everything, Pelissero said, the determination was that holding a supplemental draft was simply not in the league's best interest. Training camps would be opening at the same time, and a full pro day process for Sorsby would generate wall-to-wall coverage colliding with players returning to work. The league saw a sideshow it did not want.

The pushback is pointed. Pelissero cited a statement from the office of Jeffrey Kessler, who has fought the NFL for decades, arguing the league laid out a process, Sorsby followed it exactly, asked if anything else was needed, was told no, and then learned at the same time as the media that he was out. Now Kessler, the NFLPA and Sorsby's agent Ron Slavin have to decide whether to challenge it and on what grounds.

The human cost framed the whole segment. Sorsby is not currently in the NFLPA, though the union has traditionally defended players' pre-draft rights. And whatever the league's letter suggests about him avoiding consequences, Pelissero pushed back hard. Sorsby has spent more than a million dollars in legal fees, lost millions in NIL money and his Texas Tech earnings, and now enters the league with what Pelissero called a scarlet letter, certain to be scrutinized unlike anyone else. "He's paid a significant price," Pelissero said. Whether he wants to take that fight into federal court is the question that remains.