Brendan Sorsby scouting report: Where would you rank among top QB draft prospects?

The Brendan Sorsby saga has taken another unprecedented turn.

After being ruled ineligible by the NCAA to bet on college sports, the star quarterback on Monday received a temporary injunction making him eligible to play for Texas Tech this fall, for now.

The ruling sent shockwaves through the sport and could have major ramifications within both college football and the NFL. Sorsby, scandal aside, is considered one of the most talented QB prospects in the country, generating a lot of attention about whether (and where) he will play in 2026.

There’s still a chance this summer that Sorsby ends up in an NFL supplemental draft, which hasn’t seen anyone selected since the Arizona Cardinals used a fifth-round pick on safety Jalen Thompson in 2019.

While Sorsby’s playing status appears to be far from settled, he will immediately return to the NFL’s radar if he loses his NCAA eligibility again. In the meantime, we’ve examined his biggest strengths and weaknesses, where he ranks as a draft prospect, his pro comps, and his best NFL team fits.

Strengths

At a solid 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, Sorsby certainly looks like an NFL quarterback. And he also has the arm and athleticism to star at the highest level.

In today’s era of simplified crime, statistics can certainly be misleading. However, Sorsby’s numbers speak for themselves. He completed 61.4% of his passes for 7,208 yards and 60 touchdowns against 18 interceptions in a combined 35 games at Cincinnati (2024-25) and Indiana (2022-23) while rushing for another 1,295 yards and 22 touchdowns.

He has plenty of arm strength to make every throw in the playbook and is a talented, creative passer who can throw from multiple arm positions. He has excellent touch on intermediate pitches, constantly “dropping it in the bucket” on fades and verticals. Sorsby can also increase RPM and shoot deep crossovers and deep exits with precision. Frankly, the arm’s talent is undeniable.

As his rushing totals suggest, Sorsby is also a real threat as a running back. Cincinnati and Indiana wisely called a lot of quarterback runs for him, but he’s not depending on them to keep the defense honest. He shows patience in the pocket and looks to exhaust his passing opportunities downfield before looking down to fight, but when he does, Sorsby is able to slip away. It accelerates smoothly and has good lateral agility for evasion, as well as the armor to absorb occasional inputs. He is a competitive running back with good vision and understanding of where he is on the field, struggling for first downs 109 times over the last three years.

Sorsby plays with a swagger that will appeal to NFL teams. He showed steady development during his three seasons as a starter and looked like a future first-round pick in Cincinnati last year. Perhaps most importantly, he showed maturity and humility by publicly admitting his gambling addiction and recently completed a 35-day inpatient rehabilitation period at Algamus, a respected gambling treatment center in Goodyear, Ari.

Sorsby is an excellent running back, totaling 22 rushing touchdowns in his college career. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

Weaknesses

The concerns with Sorsby are as obvious as his talent, although most of them are off the field.

The quarterback position requires leadership, responsibility and selflessness. Some NFL teams may find it hard to believe Sorsby possesses enough of these to justify a draft pick.

He is an admitted gambling addict who bet thousands of times, including in Indiana while playing for the Hoosiers. He used the names of family and friends as proxies for betting, clearly trying to evade NCAA rules.

Scouts looking to examine Sorsby may find few defenders.

Although Curt Cignetti and many of his coaches were not yet in Indiana when Sorsby played there, others who were there may be hesitant to tarnish the reputation of the defending national champion Hoosiers. The program itself sounded like one seeking to distance itself from Sorsby with a brief, concise statement to The Daily Hoosier following the discovery of his gambling.

And since the University of Cincinnati filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against him for violating the 18-month NIL contract he signed after transferring to Indiana, Sorsby may not have many Bearcats fans either.

His former teammates in Cincinnati might feel the same given Sorsby opted out of the 2026 Liberty Bowl against Navy, a Jan. 2 game the Bearcats lost 35-13 and generated just 12 total first downs on offense.

Frankly, interested NFL teams will ultimately spend more time evaluating Sorsby’s character than his recorded weaknesses. But as with any young quarterback, he certainly has flaws.

There are times when Sorsby lowers his arm slot considerably, which could become a problem in the NFL. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

Sorsby shows good accuracy at all levels of the field, but some of his deep passes flutter a bit, giving defenders a chance to recover. A pair of his interceptions last season came on deep balls that hung in the air, including one in the final seconds of Cincinnati’s season opener at Nebraska, where Sorsby was intercepted at the goal line to seal a 20-17 loss.

While I like his ability to lower his arm angle and throw around defenders as well as over them, Sorsby often unnecessarily resorts to a spring release which effectively makes him a much shorter passer and more prone to receiving batted passes at the line of scrimmage in the NFL. Like most quarterbacks at this stage in their careers, Sorsby can feel a little panicked when the rush hits home and his accuracy declines when his feet aren’t set.

As a running back, he often carries the ball with one hand and, despite what his stats suggest, has struggled with fumbles. While he lost “only” five fumbles during his college career, Sorsby actually put the ball on the ground 12 times in 294 career attempts, according to PFF.

draft range

There wasn’t a player in the 2026 draft class with a higher ceiling and lower floor than Sorsby, so projecting where he would have been selected is a more complicated hypothesis than it seems.

Let me explain to you.

Sorsby is a more physically talented and significantly more experienced quarterback than Alabama product Ty Simpson. If the former didn’t have the off-field complexities mentioned above, I think he could have been selected ahead of Simpson, who surprisingly went 13th overall to the Los Angeles Rams.

This is not to say that the Rams would specifically rank Sorsby above Simpson. As noted before the draft, I thought Simpson, an accurate, quick-thinking pocket passer, was a particularly good fit in Los Angeles.

While it’s unlikely that Brendan Sorsby would have been selected ahead of Fernando Mendoza if he had declared for the 2026 NFL Draft, Sorsby’s ceiling could be higher. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

For the record, I don’t think Sorsby would have challenged Fernando Mendoza for the Las Vegas Raiders’ number one overall pick if he had declared it. However, Sorsby’s traits and ascending play would have attracted plenty of other suitors after Mendoza, including perhaps the New York Jets at No. 2 overall and the Cardinals at No. 3.

But of course, Sorsby has character concerns, and NFL clubs may have known about them, or at least suspected them, before the draft. (Reports that he was under investigation by the NCAA for sports betting emerged just days after the draft.) Therefore, it is also very possible that it had fallen.

Ultimately, however, the upside of a cheap contract for a starting quarterback would be too tempting for some clubs. I suppose someone would have thrown a Day 2 dart, at the very least.

As for the 2027 draft, which Sorsby is currently looking to be included in, the competition is considerably tougher. In my too-early 2027 simulation, I had five quarterbacks come off the board in the first round, all for the No. 14 overall pick: Arch Manning (No. 1, Dolphins), Dante Moore (No. 2, Cardinals), Sam Leavitt (No. 4, Browns), Julian Sayin (No. 12, Jets) and LaNorris Sellers (No. 14, Steelers). Also of note, FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt ranked quarterbacks CJ Carr and Trinidad Chambliss among his top 10 starting prospects in the 2027 class.

Obviously, there’s still a lot to figure out with Sorsby, but as of today, I’d put him behind most of this group and consider him a 2027 second-round pick.

Arch Manning remains the consensus pick to be the first QB selected in the 2027 NFL Draft. (Photo by Kenneth Richmond/Getty Images)

Best fits for NFL team

My best NFL competition for Sorsby right now is a cross between Baker Mayfield and Jaxson Dart. It makes him suitable for several teams in the league. Chief among them: the Cardinals, Jets, Colts, Dolphins, Texans, Buccaneers, Ravens, Cowboys, Vikings and Steelers.