Albert Breer’s Notes: What’s Next for Brendan Sorsby If He Loses His Injunction

ORLANDO — As the NFL’s spring meeting and revamped Accelerator kick off, here is what’s making news around the league. Let’s dive in.

Brendan Sorsby

Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby filed for an injunction against the NCAA on Monday, and so comes the acceleration of his case that we’ve referenced here over the past couple of weeks.

To review, Sorsby hired powerful sports-labor attorney Jeffrey Kessler not to get into a protracted legal battle with the NCAA over his gambling, but to speed up the process so he could make an informed decision about entering the NFL’s supplemental draft. While the NCAA has yet to rule on Sorsby’s case, it has relatively new rules that call for a player to permanently lose eligibility if he or she bets on a team at his or her school—and Sorsby’s already admitted to gambling on Indiana football during his redshirt year there, 2022.

If Sorsby is granted the injunction—and he filed for it in what should be a Tech-friendly court, in Lubbock County—then he’d be able to play while the case is in the court system, and collect on the school’s $6 million commitment to him for 2026. And I’m told the plan then would be to go forward with the Red Raiders.

If he doesn’t land the injunction and is stripped of his eligibility, then entering the NFL’s supplemental draft would be a strong consideration, if not a likelihood.

Along those lines, Sorsby’s camp is hoping for a hearing date on the injunction for the week of June 1, which would give the quarterback plenty of time to prepare to work out for NFL teams if he can’t return to his college team. The argument Kessler and his legal team have made is that he never bet on a game he actually played in, and this was an addiction—proven by low-stakes bets on things like Australian Open women’s doubles matches, Turkish basketball and Romanian soccer games—and not about financial gain, and should be treated like any other addiction.

The NFL has given his camp some dates to work off, in case the injunction isn’t granted. The deadline for Sorsby to apply for the draft is June 22, and he has a 10-day window—July 5 to 15—to work out for teams, with a draft day after that in late July. As part of the process, he’d have a pro day, which would likely be held in the Dallas area.

Anyway, Sorsby’s got the look of a pretty high-end prospect, who would likely elicit some second- or even first-round bids.

NFL flag football leagues

NFL EVP Peter O’Reilly told Kay Adams, host of Up & Adams, on Monday that the NFL is targeting a 2027 launch date for its new flag football leagues—and that there’ll be one league for the men’s game, and another for the women's game.

Do I think it’s going to become a major, or even relevant, professional sport? Probably not.

But focusing on that would be missing the point of the effort. The NFL is now entering its 20th season since launching the International Series in 2007, when it sent the Giants and Dolphins over to London for a game.

Some of the league’s objectives have been met. Very clearly, growth has come. The NFL played two games in 2013, three games in ’14, returned to Mexico in ’16, and began expanding to other parts of Europe in ’22. The league has now played regular-season games in six foreign countries, and France and Australia will make it eight this fall. On the flip side, the early goal of having a team in London within 15 years of the 2007 launch was not met.

The NFL has kept its eye on the prize throughout, though, and that’s the continued growth and monetization of football overseas, and one thing that’s obvious is you can only grow so much with a sport that people aren’t playing. Just as obvious is the challenge to exporting tackle football, with barriers that don’t exist in games like basketball and soccer. So, flag football has become the answer for the NFL, both in attracting girls and getting folks overseas to play.

The goal is to have more boys and girls with footballs in their hands, and in time, into the sorts of passionate paying customers the NFL has all over this country. It’s ambitious for sure, and they’ve made headway.

That said, I think what we all saw at the Fanatics event in Los Angeles last month was that flag is a completely different sport. So its actual appeal to fans remains to be seen.

NFL bidding process

The NFL is set to award Super Bowl LXIV, set for February 2030, to Nashville, and the 2028 draft to Minneapolis at Tuesday’s owners meetings in Orlando. We detailed some of this on Monday—and it’s worth noting that these things are a little different than they used to be.

There had been a bidding process in the past. But those would be laborious and expensive for cities, and it seemed wasteful for three cities to go through it only to have two left out.

So the league now does have cities apply, but they’ll identify a bid city for either event, and then have that city put together a plan to present to the owners. This generally leads to that city landing the event, which will almost certainly happen here in Florida today.

EverPass subscription service

One point of interest on the agenda for the meetings is EverPass, a subscription service that allows bars and restaurants to have access to all NFL games without having to have 15 subscriptions to get them—like you do at home.

Cincinnati Bengals

The Bengals open OTAs this week, and Joe Burrow is now in his third week in town to work with his teammates, having spent earlier parts of the offseason in Southern California, where he has a place, and where he spent time working with quarterbacks coach Jordan Palmer.

Organized team activities

While we’re there—my annual reminder that OTAs, in layman’s terms, really is the beginning of football practice for these teams for 2026. It’s when the install on both sides of the ball takes off, and when more competitive reps start. And it really does help set the stage for training camp when starting positions and roster spots are won and lost.

Victor Wembanyama comp

Finally, I’m racking my brain, after watching what Victor Wembanyama did last night, for who would be the football comp for him. And I think you can look at this two ways. Just as far as freak athleticism goes, you could look at build-a-player edge rushers, like Myles Garrett or Julius Peppers. As far as the ability to take over by physically overwhelming an opponent, it might be Josh Allen. But I don’t think there’s a football one-for-one for him.

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