Analysis: Embattled Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is turning pro. Will he make it in the NFL?

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The Brendan Sorsby saga took another surprise twist Monday night as the Texas Tech quarterback ended months of speculation and legal wrangling over his college eligibility as an admitted gambler and declared for the NFL’s supplemental draft.

But even as the latest bombshell news dropped a week after a Texas judge granted the Cincinnati transfer an injunction to be allowed to play for the Red Raiders in 2026, I can’t seem to get one prevailing notion out of my head.

Nor can several other of my fellow reporters in this crazy business of college football.

My take: Sorsby was simply not worth it for Texas Tech, and he probably won’t set the NFL on fire, either.

Sorry to any Sorsby supporters out there, but he’s just not that good.

Sorsby is the quarterback from Denton, Texas, who began his college career at Indiana — where he admittedly bet on games in which the Hoosiers played — and then played the last two seasons at Cincinnati. In January, he entered the transfer portal and then signed with free-spending Texas Tech for a reported $5 million in revenue sharing and NIL money.

On April 27, he announced through the school that he planned to enter a residential rehabilitation program for a gambling addiction, even as news broke that he was the subject of an NCAA investigation into whether he had bet on Indiana games in 2022 while on the program’s roster.

Sorsby wagered at least $90,000 across a variety of college and professional sports, and made at least 40 bets on the Indiana football team, among other missteps.

The NCAA ruled him ineligible for the 2026 season, and many believed at that time that he would enter the supplemental draft and put college football in his rearview mirror. Monday night, he did just that, but not before dragging Texas Tech into the mess and making the program a pariah in the Big 12.

Sorsby’s decision to turn pro came just hours after the Big 12 filed a 47-page complaint against Texas Tech saying that injunctive relief would allow the conference to “exercise its rights in full and leave no doubt in the minds of its many other upstanding student-athletes, its potential future student-athletes, its rival athletic conferences and their member institutions, and the general public, of exactly where it stands on an important moral, ethical and legal issue.”

Later Monday, the NCAA filed its formal appeal to the June 8 ruling from the Texas judge granting Sorsby’s request for an injunction, saying that every day the injunction remains in effect, “the harm compounds, the NCAA’s governance authority erodes, copycat litigation becomes more likely, and the integrity of every contest in which an ineligible athlete competes is called into question.”

So Sorsby’s decision saves parties on both sides from more billable hours, and takes some money out of the pockets of attorneys and law firms. Now it is up to NFL scouts, general managers and coaches to decide whether he’s worth the trouble.

BYU and Utah deserve honest competition. @govcox and I stand behind the Big 12 and support its right to enforce its own rules. pic.twitter.com/PRLm9TkQz1

— Office of the Utah Attorney General (@UtahAG) June 15, 2026

Also Monday, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown became the third state attorney general, joining those of Oklahoma and Kansas, to send a letter to the Big 12 backing the league’s threatened sanctions against Texas Tech.

“The harm from Texas Tech’s proposed course of action is not merely legal — it is structural. … Every student-athlete in the Big 12 — at BYU, the University of Utah, and every other member school — trains, competes and sacrifices on that premise (of fair play),” Brown wrote.

Brendan Sorsby is good, but not that good

The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Sorsby appeared in one game for Indiana in 2022 (against Penn State), the year he made all those bets on games involving the Hoosiers, and called that his redshirt season. In 2023, he started in seven games and played in 10 as a redshirt freshman, completing 57% of his passes for 1,587 yards and 15 touchdowns, with five interceptions.

He was slightly better at Cincinnati, completing 64% of his passes in 2024 and 61.6% last year. He threw for around 2,800 yards each year, but was more efficient as a junior with 27 touchdowns and only five interceptions. He was sacked only seven times, after having been sacked 17 times apiece in 2023 at Indiana and 2024 at Cincinnati.

So he’s a solid, serviceable college quarterback, in my opinion. But he’s not a game-changer, and a case could be made that he’s not a clutch performer. Count me surprised if he does anything extraordinary in the NFL.

Certainly, Utah and BYU fans had no reason to be impressed with Sorsby in 2025, after watching him play against the Utes and Cougars.

On Nov. 1 at Rice-Eccles, Sorsby was overwhelmed in a 45-14 loss to the Utes, completing only 11 of 33 passes for 221 yards and a touchdown. He was intercepted once, by Smith Snowden.

Three weeks later, that same Utah defense gave up 574 yards and 47 points to lowly Kansas State.

On Nov. 22 at Nippert Stadium in Cincy, a game I personally witnessed, Sorsby simply did not stand out as the type of quarterback who can take over a game and lead a team to a home win, let alone make a national championship run.

Going against Jay Hill’s vaunted BYU defense, Sorsby did throw for 300 yards and two TDs, but he needed nearly 40 attempts to get that total. He rushed eight times for 38 yards, with a long of 14. BYU’s LJ Martin ran for a career-high 222 yards and was clearly the best player on the field that night.

In doing everything possible to position itself for inclusion in a super league or expanded version of the SEC/B1G – whatever the next structure is – Texas Tech has masterfully made itself persona non grata https://t.co/qPhrpb3yfr

— Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) June 11, 2026

Here’s the most sobering stat to consider regarding Sorsby, in my opinion: In the last two Novembers combined, Sorsby is 0-8 as a starting QB and has completed only 58.3% of his passes. Dating back to his days at Indiana, he has lost 11 straight November games.

He hasn’t won a November game since a win over Wisconsin in 2023. Last year, against the top-30 pass efficiency defenses (Utah, BYU, Nebraska, Arizona), his efficiency rating was 104.6. Against all other teams, it was 184.7%.

Granted, Texas Tech has more talent than those Cincinnati and Indiana teams did from 2023-25, but not that much better.

Why is Texas Tech doing this?

Texas Tech’s leadership, including university President Lawrence Schovanec, athletic director Kirby Hocutt and head football coach Joey McGuire made a nauseating 21-minute video intended to express their support for Sorsby and defend their reasoning for arguing that he deserved to be eligible to play in Big 12 games in 2026.

But in my opinion, McGuire said what this was all about back on May 28 during a news conference at the Big 12 spring meetings. Flanked by Big 12 chief football and competition officer Scott Draper and West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, McGuire pretty much acknowledged that Texas Tech would not be going through all this if backup quarterback Will Hammond was completely healthy.

I know Texas Tech is in a spot no school wants to be in but I’m genuinely surprised at how poorly they have handled this. With the money they have this might be the worst PR campaign we have seen

— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) June 11, 2026

Hammond tore the ACL in his right knee last October and is not expected to be fully cleared for all football-related activities until Aug. 21 at the soonest.

“I mean, we’re really fortunate to have Will Hammond. If he’s not hurt, then we’re not talking about this,” McGuire admitted, further confirming suspicions that this is more about fielding a championship-caliber football team than it is about taking care of Sorsby’s mental well-being off the field.

“We wouldn’t have been looking for, necessarily, a starting quarterback,” McGuire continued. “We’d have been looking for, you know, probably a depth piece in that room, and that money would have been allocated to other positions.”

Another beat writer weighs in

Scott Springer of the Cincinnati Enquirer has personally watched every game in which Sorsby has played the past two years. I reached out to the veteran beat writer to get his take on the quarterback’s value.

“I think he’s good and worthy of the NFL, but I don’t think he’s $5 million good,” Springer said, referring to the amount of NIL money Sorsby was going to get from Texas Tech and its boosters. “He has great size, arm strength and angles and swagger, which you want your quarterback to have. … When I heard what Sorsby would command (in the transfer portal), my first thought was you could probably get two stellar quarterbacks for that.”

Springer noted that Cincy was 5-2 in 2024 and 7-1 in 2025 before the wheels came off those years, the result of a tougher late schedule as much as anything.

“Whether it be play calling or inefficiency, he wasn’t as successful. … He did have crucial turnovers in November the last two seasons, including an opening drive pick-six against Arizona and two years ago he cost them a game versus West Virginia with more,” Springer said.

Against BYU, the Bearcats missed several red zone scoring opportunities and three field goals, “which was uncharacteristic,” he noted. “… Brendan just turned 22 in January, so he will mature in many ways. I think he can be good with what he has to offer, and someone will benefit from taking him at some point.

“But Cincinnati has had better quarterbacks, and there were others in the league that looked better to me, including (Josh) Hoover when he was at TCU, (Noah) Fifita at Arizona and (Bear) Bachmeier with the Cougars is a winner.”

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