The prank call to Shedeur Sanders during the NFL draft wasn’t related to the ones other players received, a person familiar with the league’s investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Tyler Warren, Kyle McCord, Mason Graham and Chase Lundt also have reported receiving prank calls.
The call to Sanders, whom the Cleveland Browns drafted in the fifth round, made headlines Sunday when the Atlanta Falcons said defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son was responsible. Sanders received a prank call Friday night, the second day of the draft, while waiting after entering the draft expecting to be a first-round pick.
The Falcons released a statement saying 21-year-old Jax Ulbrich “unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parents’ home and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call.”
The league provided phone numbers to teams for only the 15 players who attended the draft in Green Bay and the players who were participating in virtual interviews with NFL Network and ESPN. Sanders and Warren were among those doing virtual interviews.
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Though Jax Ulbrich provided the number, he was sitting beside an unidentified friend who actually made the call to Sanders.
The Falcons said Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the data exposure or the prank until after the fact. They offered “sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family” in their statement, and Jax Ulbrich also posted a public apology on social media.
Sanders, a standout quarterback from Colorado, is the son of Buffaloes coach and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, who began his NFL career with the Falcons.
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Lundt, an offensive lineman from UConn, was selected in the sixth round by the Buffalo Bills. He said he received several prank calls.
“It’s been quite crazy of a day,” he said. “I fielded a couple like prank calls before it, so I was kind of up and down a little bit — like if anything was real or not. So whenever I got this call, it kind of made me feel a little bit more calmed down. And it was just nice to see that the Buffalo Bills were really interested in me.”
McCord, the former Syracuse quarterback whom the Philadelphia Eagles drafted last weekend, told Philadelphia-area media that someone tried to prank him while the draft was ongoing.
The father of the Cleveland Browns’ top pick, former Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham, told the Detroit Free Press that someone had made a TikTok while calling Graham and showed his number on video.
“His phone was getting called nonstop,” Allen Graham told the Free Press via text message.
AP’s John Wawrow in Buffalo, N.Y., contributed.