The NFL has decided not to allow quarterback Brendan Sorsby into the supplemental draft. The reasons expressed in the league’s letter explaining the decision arguably find no support in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
From Article 6, Section 2(c) of the CBA: “If a player who was not eligible for the Draft in any League Year becomes eligible after the date of the Draft, he will be eligible to be selected in a Supplemental Draft, if the League elects to conduct such a Draft, on or before the seventh calendar day prior to the opening of the first training camp that League Year. No player may elect to bypass a Draft for which he is eligible to apply for selection in a Supplemental Draft.”
The test is eligibility, not purity or integrity. Generally speaking, special eligibility for the draft vests, as set forth in Article 6, Section 2(b), when “three NFL regular seasons have begun and ended following either his graduation from high school or graduation of the class with which he entered high school, whichever is earlier.” Sorsby, if he had decided to forgo remaining college eligibility, could have entered the 2026 draft in April under the “special eligibility” rule.
Eligibility for the supplemental draft arises when “a player who was not eligible for the Draft in any League Year becomes eligible after the date of the Draft.” Sorsby was not eligible for the April 2026 draft because he did not apply for special eligibility. He thereafter became eligible after the April 2026 draft concluded.
In other words, Sorsby’s case falls squarely within the definition of eligibility for the supplemental draft.
The league hasn’t tried to fashion an argument that Sorsby doesn’t qualify under the terms of Article 6, Section 2(c), for example, that Sorsby knew or should have known he was eligible for the April 2026 draft because he knew or should have known he was permanently ineligible to play college football. Instead, the league has attached conditions to eligibility that appear nowhere in the CBA.
For example, the CBA does not include a requirement that the league have time to investigate the player who seeks eligibility for the supplemental draft. Also, the CBA does not include a requirement that the player must “demonstrate accountability” for the violation of NCAA rules or any other standards.
Under the plain language of the CBA, Sorsby is eligible for the supplemental draft.
As to the notion that the league doesn’t have to hold a supplemental draft if it doesn’t feel like having one, the question becomes the NFL’s longstanding pattern and practice. Here’s the core question: Has the NFL ever before blocked an objectively eligible player from the supplemental draft?
In 2011, when the NFL later concluded that former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor should serve a five-game suspension, the league didn’t keep him out of the supplemental draft — even though the Commissioner found that Pryor “secure[d his] own ineligibility for college play in order to avoid previously determined disciplinary consequences for admitted conduct” in a way that “reflects poorly not on college football -- which acted to discipline the transgressor -- but on the NFL, by making it into a sanctuary where a player cannot only avoid the consequences of his conduct, but be paid for doing so.”
Shouldn’t Pryor, given that reasoning, have simply been denied eligibility for the supplemental draft?
Custom and practice become binding on management in the collective bargaining context. The Pryor situation alone shows that the NFL’s established precedent is to allow eligible players into the supplemental draft and then, if necessary, suspend them later.
In this case, the Kayshon Boutte and Hunter Dekkers precedents would have made it difficult to sell a suspension after Sorsby was drafted. And so the league decided to bypass a suspension and to slam the door on Sorsby.
The problem is that the CBA doesn’t support the league’s preferred outcome. And that’s undoubtedly the argument Sorsby’s lawyer will make, whether the fight unfolds within the context of the CBA or through a separate lawsuit. Or both.