Keeler: Shedeur Sanders phone prank should lead to fines, suspensions for Atlanta Falcons coach
Throw the phone book at him At all of them If the NFL doesn t levy suspensions against the Atlanta Falcons and their loose-lipped defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich then the fines for their role in the Shedeur Sanders happening had best be legendary And don t tell us to lighten up Francis Let s run this scenario and you tell me how it plays out at the end in of corporate America Say you work for big pharma Your company s discovered hair tonic that ll turn Elmer Fudd into Chris Pine overnight You ve got the formula written out in a document on your iPad You come home It s late You leave stated iPad out on the kitchen table while you go to the den to watch Nuggets-Clippers You forget to shut down noted iPad so now that formula is out there for anybody to read While you re cheering on Aaron Gordon your son comes down and notices this iPad on the table that s got a document open on the home screen that says TOP SECRET ELMER FUDD HAIR REGROWING FORMULA written at the top Now say your kid has his own Instagram feed or a YouTube channel the way the bulk kids do now Your kid wants clicks Your kid wants subscribers Your kid wants to be a social media influencer What faster way to rope in a gazillion followers than to sneak into your home studio turn on the cameras and leak the sure cure for male baldness But here s what happens in the real world after that video goes viral the way Jax Ulbrich s did after he prank-called the ex-CU quarterback this past Friday pretending to be Saints general manager Mickey Loomis Your company goes absolutely ballistic The lawyers go ballistic Related Articles Renck vs Keeler Who will emerge as sleeper pick of Broncos NFL draft class Keeler Avalanche s Logan O Connor sent Dallas Stars a message for Championship We re not going to back down Keeler Hello Cleveland Why CU Buffs star Shedeur Sanders can fly where Johnny Manziel crashed Grading The Week Gabe Landeskog s comeback renewed our faith in humanity Our faith in the Avs We ll see Keeler Shedeur Sanders draft slide proves there s one contest Deion Sanders can t change The NFL Your bosses go ballistic They trace the leak all the way back to you that part isn t hard and to the iPad that you left out on the table In a lot of cases you re fired on the spot In almost all of them you re suspended and that s the best-case scenario See the issue here isn t that a college dude did a dumb childish thing It s that a grown-up his father took home confidential information during a weekend when that information was privileged and vital and treated it the way Homer Simpson would treat nuclear secrets It s that Dad allowed his -year-old kid to turn the NFL draft into an episode of The Howard Stern Show For kicks You expect Jax to be a doofus You also expect Jeff to know better And you d expect the Falcons to come up with something stronger than their milquetoast organizational message on Sunday in which the Ulbrichs to their credit came clean publicly Jax Ulbrich the -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 parents home the Falcons missive read and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the details 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 Prank calls are as old as rotary phones Pranking NFL rookies is a rite of passage ex-Iowa star Cooper DeJean to cite one example took a fake call during s draft weekend before definitively being selected by the Philadelphia Eagles What s the big deal then you ask It s happened before Exactly That s two times too countless already People are morons would be my reaction to that offered Browns coach Kevin Stefanski whose crew wound up drafting Shedeur in the fifth round on Saturday I mean it s sad that these young men have to deal with this That happened a lot in the green room in Green Bay Guys were getting calls So it s silly but onward and upward But here s the thing NFL employees from GMs to coaches to backing staff are constantly reminded that none of them are bigger than the shield So if a athlete takes a political stand a la Colin Kaepernick he s too much of a distraction but a guy who leaves draft picks phone numbers out for his kid to write down is a victim of accidental circumstance Got it Want to nip this in the bud Make the Ulbrichs an example A cautionary tale Now On Friday night I made a tremendous mistake Sheduer sic what I did was totally inexcusable embarrassing and shameful Jax Ulbrich wrote in an apology posted to his Instagram feed 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 this day I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me Forgive Perpetually Forget Not on your life Shedeur wasn t the first But he better darn well be the last Want more Broncos news Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis
