Brendan Sorsby’s tape has first-round believers. PFN draft analyst Jacob Infante is not one of them.
The Texas Tech transfer, now bound for the supplemental draft after walking away from his eligibility fight, has drawn first-round chatter on the strength of his arm and athleticism. One NFC executive told ESPN he is “a first-round talent for sure.” Infante sees the appeal and stops well short of it.
“I like Sorsby as a prospect. I wouldn’t go nearly that far,” Infante said.
Why Brendan Sorsby’s Tools Fuel the First-Round Talk
The traits jump off the screen. At 6-3 and 235 pounds, Sorsby throws with velocity and moves well, and he just delivered his best college season, throwing for 2,800 yards with 27 touchdown passes and 5 interceptions at Cincinnati in 2025 while adding 580 yards and 9 scores on the ground. PFSN’s QB Impact metric ranked him 10th in FBS.
The buzz is not baseless. The 2026 draft was thin at quarterback, with only Fernando Mendoza (No. 1, Raiders) and Ty Simpson (No. 13, Rams) going in the first round, and before his gambling case surfaced, scouts told ESPN that Sorsby would have been a high Round 1 pick had he declared. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky has put him in the first-round conversation. The ceiling is real.
“He’s got prototypical size, he’s got a really good arm, he can move,” Infante said. “He’s shown some really good flashes.”
Sorsby would have been a first round pick conversation in 2027 draft… pic.twitter.com/nOBwu8lux1
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) June 16, 2026
That ceiling is exactly why a quarterback-needy team will study him hard. But ceiling is not projection, and that distinction is where Infante draws his line.
The Tape Flags That Cap Brendan Sorsby as a Day 2 Quarterback
Infante’s concern is the decision-making beneath the highlights. He sees a passer who locks onto his first read and leans on his arm to bail him out.
“You’re looking at somebody who’s primarily a one-read quarterback,” Infante said. “He trusts his arm a little too much. When he sees safety help, he tends to ignore it, and that can really get him into some precarious situations.”
The efficiency splits sharpen the point. By Infante’s charting, Sorsby posted a 42.4 passer rating on deep throws to the right side and a 66.9 mark on intermediate throws to the right, numbers that expose the inconsistency hiding under a clean touchdown-to-interception line.
That is the gap between a tantalizing skill set and a finished product. Infante slotted Sorsby as his third-ranked quarterback in the 2026 class, behind Mendoza and Simpson, which tracks with PFSN’s own board.
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“A second-round, third-round pick, certainly possible,” Infante said. “He would have been my QB3 in the 2026 draft. QB1, first-round pick, I think that’s taking it a little bit too far.”
The supplemental draft will settle the argument in picks. Teams submit blind bids by round, and the expectation is that the bidding lands somewhere from Day 2 to Day 3, with a loaded 2027 quarterback class giving front offices every reason not to overpay. Sorsby has the arm to make a war room dream on him. The film is the reason that dream comes with a discount.