If/when the NFL explores whether a Terrelle Pryor-style suspension should be imposed on quarterback Brendan Sorsby after the supplemental draft, the Kayshon Boutte precedent points to no punishment.
The Hunter Dekkers precedent does, too.
Dekkers, who re-signed with the Saints this week, missed the entire 2023 college football season after losing his NCAA eligibility for betting on one of his team’s games. With his NCAA eligibility permanently vacated, Dekkers played for Iowa Western Community College in 2024 before entering the draft. The NFL imposed no roadblocks to his professional career, before or after the 2025 draft.
After going undrafted, Dekkers spent most of the 2025 season with the Saints. He played for the Houston Gamblers of the UFL in 2026.
While at Iowa State, Dekkers had made more than 350 bets on his mother’s DraftKings account. In 2021, he made a $15 wager on Iowa State to beat Oklahoma State. Dekkers did not play in the game.
He eventually pleaded guilty to underage gambling in Iowa.
“I wasn’t throwing games, I wasn’t shaving points, and I would never do that,” Dekkers told ESPN last year, in the weeks before the 2025 draft. “There was never any intent behind any of these bets. We weren’t trying to make money. We were just treating it like a video game, in a sense.”
That’s the basic reality of an age in which gambling has become legalized — and normalized. The ads are everywhere. It’s inescapable. Sports fans are constantly bombarded with picks and parlays and the presumption that betting is fun. It’s very easy for anyone to pick up a phone, open an app, and press a few buttons.
Everyone can eat the forbidden fruit, expect the players who are watering the tree. There inevitably will be some that take a little taste, or more. Not to get rich. Just to chase that tiny thrill of vicarious victory.
Dekkers obviously paid the price at the college level. Sorsby did, too. The NFL’s decision not to suspend Dekkers or Boutte should lead to the same result with Sorsby.
There’s no guarantee it will. The five-game suspension of Terrelle Pryor still lingers, 15 years later. As to Sorsby, the league will do whatever it wants to do.
Given what the NFL didn’t do to Kayshon Boutte and Hunter Dekkers, the NFL shouldn’t do anything to Brendan Sorsby.
