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

The Brendan Sorsby saga has taken another unprecedented turn.

After previously being ruled ineligible by the NCAA to bet on college sports, the star quarterback was granted a temporary injunction Monday that makes him eligible to play for Texas Tech this fall — for now.

The decision sent shockwaves throughout the sport and could have major ramifications within both college football and the NFL. Barring a scandal, Sorsby is considered one of the more talented QB prospects in the country, bringing a lot of attention to whether — and where — he will play in 2026.

There’s still the possibility this summer that Sorsby ends up in an NFL supplemental draft that 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 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 players and his best NFL team fits.

Strengthens

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

In today’s era of simplified offenses, 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 over 35 combined games in 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 gifted, creative passer who can throw from a variety of arm openings. He has excellent touch on intermediate throws and consistently “drops it in the bucket” on fades and verticals. Sorsby can also increase the RPM and fire deep crosses and deep outs with precision. Honestly, the arm talent is undeniable.

As his rushing totals suggest, Sorsby is also a real threat as a runner. Cincinnati and Indiana both wisely called a lot of QB runs for him, but he doesn’t rely on them to keep defenses honest. He shows patience in the pocket and looks to exhaust his passing options down the field before dropping his eyes to run — but when he does, Sorsby can run around. He accelerates smoothly and has good lateral agility to escape, as well as the body armor to absorb the occasional tackle. A competitive runner with good vision and understanding of where he is on the field, he has scrambled for first downs 109 times over the past three years.

Sorsby plays with a swagger that will appeal to NFL teams. He showed steady development over 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 rehab at Algamus, a respected gambling treatment facility in Goodyear, Ari.

Sorsby is an outstanding runner who added 22 touchdowns on the ground in his college career. (Photo: 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, accountability and selflessness. Some NFL teams may have a hard time believing Sorsby possesses enough of these to justify a draft pick.

He is an admitted gambler who bet thousands of times, including on Indiana while playing for the Hoosiers. He used the names of family and friends as a proxy to make bets, clearly trying to circumvent NCAA rules.

Scouts looking for vet Sorsby can find few advocates.

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

And considering the University of Cincinnati filed a million-dollar lawsuit against him for violating the 18-month NIL contract he signed after his Indiana transfer, Sorsby might not have many Bearcats supporters either.

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

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

There are times when Sorsby drops his arm significantly, 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 balls flutter a bit, giving defenders a chance to recover. A couple of his interceptions last season came on deep balls that hung in the air, most notably one in the final seconds of Cincinnati’s season opener at Nebraska, when Sorsby was intercepted at the goal line to cap a 20-17 loss.

While I like his ability to release his arm angle and throw around defenders as well as over them, Sorsby often unnecessarily resorts to more of a sling-shot, side-arm release that effectively makes him a much shorter passer and more likely to get passes knocked down at the line in the NFL. Like most quarterbacks at this stage of their careers, Sorsby can get panicky when the rush is coming home, and his accuracy drops when his feet aren’t set.

As a runner, he often carries the ball with only one hand and, despite what his stats suggest, has struggled a bit 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, per PFF.

Draft Range

There wasn’t a player in the 2026 draft class with a higher ceiling and lower floor than Sorsby, so it’s a more complicated hypothetical to project where he would have been selected.

Let me explain.

Sorsby is a more physically gifted and significantly more experienced quarterback than Alabama product Ty Simpson. If the former didn’t come with the off-field complexities mentioned above, I think he might have been drafted before Simpson, who surprisingly went No. 13 overall to the Los Angeles Rams.

This is not to suggest that the Rams would specifically rank Sorsby above Simpson. As mentioned prior to the draft, I thought Simpson—an accurate and quick-thinking pocket passer—was a particularly good fit for Los Angeles.

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

For the record, I don’t believe Sorsby would have challenged Fernando Mendoza as the Las Vegas Raiders’ No. 1 overall pick if he had declared. However, Sorsby’s character traits and rising game would have attracted many 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 issues, and NFL clubs may have known — or at least suspected — them before the draft. (Reports that he was under NCAA investigation for sports gambling surfaced just days after the draft.) So it’s also very possible that he would have flipped.

Ultimately, the benefits of a cheap contract for a starting-caliber quarterback would just be too tempting for some clubs. I guess someone would have thrown a day 2 darts, at minimum.

As for the 2027 draft, which Sorsby is currently tracking to be included in, the competition is significantly tougher. In my premature 2027 mock, I had five QBs coming off the board in the first round, all after the No. 14 overall pick: Arch Manning (No. 1, Dolphins), Dante Moore (No. 2, Cardinals), Sam Leavitt (No. 4, Browns), Julian Sayin (No. 12, Sellers) and LaNorris Jellers (No. 1 Steelers). It’s also worth noting that FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt ranked quarterbacks CJ Carr and Trinidad Chambliss among his first top-10 prospects in the 2027 class.

There’s obviously still a lot to fix with Sorsby, but as of today, I’d put him behind most of this group and peg him as a 2027 second rounder.

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

Best NFL Team Pass

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