Jax Ulbrich Is Who the NFL Is Trying to Make Shedeur Sanders Out to Be
This is about the adultification of Black boys and the infantilization of young white men.
I was going to write this long, beautiful introduction to this column with one of those Michael Harriot-esque parables at the beginning to illustrate the point I want to make, but then I decided, fuck that.
Let’s just get into this bullshit because that’s exactly what it is — some bullshit.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock all weekend, you have by now heard the news that former Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders, who was expected to be picked in the first round of the NFL draft but ended up getting picked in the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns, as the 144th overall pick.
As my man Stephen A. Crockett Jr. said elsewhere, “In no world are there 143 players better than Shedeur Sanders.”
We can talk later about the “lesson” the NFL was trying to teach Shedeur or the “humbling” they were trying to give him, because that is an entirely different conversation that is absolutely worth having.
Today, I want to talk about the stress of that moment for Shedeur.
While he maintained a positive attitude throughout the experience, there is no denying how absolutely stressful it must have been to watch that draft go on for multiple rounds and not hear his name called — especially when players who were not as good were drafted before he was.
So imagine that you are Shedeur Sanders in that moment, and you receive a call on a phone specifically provided to you by the NFL that can only be dialed by authorized individuals from the NFL, and the person on the phone claims to be New Orleans Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis, calling to say you were going to be drafted to the team.
"It's been a long wait, man," the frat boy making the call told Shedeur. "We're going to take you with our next pick right here, man. But you're going to have to wait a little bit longer, man. Sorry about that."
He then hung up on Shedeur, and we know this because the “pranksters” posted a video of themselves doing it and then laughing afterwards about how Shedeur “bought it.”
We also have video of Shedeur’s side of things since his brother, Deion Jr., was recording the entire process for the family.
Shedeur was left asking, “What does that mean?”
It didn’t take long for social media sleuths to identify one of the young men in the video as Jax Ulbrich, son of Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.
According to the story the Atlanta Falcons — and I guess the NFL — want us to believe, Jax Ulbrich was running happily through his family’s home when he tripped and fell on top of his father’s iPad, where Shedeur’s phone number — which, again, only authorized NFL personnel were supposed to have — was stored. When he fell on the iPad, Shedeur’s number ended up in his brain, and then he made the mistake of dialing that number, and that’s how we got here.
Just kidding. That’s not exactly how they told the story.
From the NFL’s official website:
"Earlier in the week, Jax Ulbrich, the 21-year-old son of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parent’s home and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call," the Falcons' statement read. "Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the data exposure or any facets of the prank and was made aware of the above only after the fact.
"The Atlanta Falcons do not condone this behavior and send our sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family, who we have been in contact with to apologize to, as well as facilitate an apology directly from Jax to the Sanders family.
"We have also been in contact with the NFL and will continue to cooperate fully with any inquiries we may receive from the NFL league office.
"We are thoroughly reviewing all protocols, and updating if necessary, to help prevent an incident like this from happening again."
According to reports, Jax is sitting on the couch next to his friend who made the call, and can be seen gleefully crowing “He bought it!” in the aftermath.
Mm hm.
Jax issued a public apology to Shedeur, calling his own actions “a tremendous mistake.”
Baby, listen.
A mistake is putting sugar on your grits when you really meant to put salt (because everyone knows sugar does not belong in grits, gotdammit).
A mistake is making a left turn when you should have made a right.
Looking on your daddy’s work iPad, copying down a phone number you know you aren’t supposed to have, then using that number to pull a prank on someone already going through an intense and stressful situation, recording said prank and then posting it on the internet is not a mistake.
Every step of that process was full of intent. You knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway because there is nothing more audacious than whiteness, and you figured that once you posted your little prank, everyone would be laughing with you, and no one would think it was a big deal.
Except, it is a big deal.
Let’s contextualize this for a moment.
There are people who think Shedeur going 144th in the fifth round of the draft is deserved — not because he isn’t good at what he does, but because he’s too “cocky” (read: confident) and not humble enough (read: self-assured).
They also hate his father, who they also think is too confident and self-assured, and the sins of the father are being visited upon the son or whatever that Bible verse says.
They think Shedeur is spoiled and entitled.
Meanwhile, he’s just a young man who is good at football. He’s not out here messing with his dad’s work electronics and making prank calls to people on some of the most important days of his life.
People want Shedeur to be more mature, but what about Jax Ulbrich?
While most people are condemning what Ulbrich did, there are a fair number of people who think it’s funny. They think it’s OK because he’s young.
White boys have the privilege of being young and immature.
Black boys do not.
So the expectation for how Black boys and young Black men conduct themselves is always going to be higher than what is expected of white boys and young white men who are out here showing their asses on a daily basis, but it’s never talked about in the same way.
Imagine if the roles were reversed, and Shedeur was out here making those kinds of phone calls.
What kind of conversations would we be having then?
Calling what you did a “tremendous mistake” is a copout and a crock of shit.
You didn’t mistakenly write that number down. You didn’t accidentally give it to your friends. The camera recording you didn’t turn itself on. The video didn’t post itself on the internet.
We saw you laughing in 4K. I’m quite sure you don’t have some weird form of laughing Tourette’s.
The language you — or your friend as proxy — used in that call was deliberate.
“You’re going to have to wait a little bit longer, man. Sorry about that.”
You made fun of the situation he was in.
This wasn’t just a prank. It was you piling onto someone’s stressful situation.
Who does that?
Oh yeah. Young white men who still get to be “boys” because the world infantilizes them and treats them like overgrown children, while viewing 12-year-old boys like Tamir Rice or 17-year-old boys like Trayvon Martin as grown men.
I hope Jax Ulbrich gets what he deserves.
I hope Shedeur Sanders gets what he deserves, too.
He deserves as much grace as Jax Ulbrich is being given.
He deserves the benefit of the youthful doubt that Jax Ulbrich is being given.
As a 23-year-old young man whose brain is not even fully developed yet, Sanders deserves the opportunity to learn and grow and make mistakes that hopefully he will learn from.
He doesn’t deserve to be held to a higher standard than the white boy who called him on the longest day of his life just to fuck with him.
White males get to be childish boys for as long as they like. Black children, boys and girls, do not.
the fact that even the NFL tried to brush Jax's inconsiderate actions under the rug to make it seem like it was some sort of "mistake", is proof positive that white boys are coddled entirely too much and Black children are demonized simply for being. Jax needs to do more than give that lame, half-assed apology.