Jeff Ulbrich’s apology admirable, as was Shedeur Sanders’ forgiveness

In his statement, Ulbrich apologized to Sanders and his family and also Falcons owner Arthur Blank, general manager Terry Fontenot, coach Raheem Morris and the organization.

“My actions — my actions — of not protecting confidential data were inexcusable,” he said. “My son’s actions were absolutely inexcusable, and for that we’re both deeply sorry.

“The NFL has taken action,” he continued. “I fully respect the punishment. We take full responsibility, my son and myself, and we will not be appealing the fine in any way.”

He promised that he and Jax will work hard to demonstrate that they are better than this regrettable moment and again expressed his remorse.

Ulbrich said he found out about the prank after the draft. He said he was “obviously not happy, and shocked,” and then proceeded to inform the team and get a hold of Sanders’ family to apologize directly.

“I credit the Sanders family,” he said. “Shedeur and Coach (Deion) Sanders were amazingly gracious, more gracious than they needed to be in a moment like this.”

He passed on opportunities to wallow in the difficulty of the past few days, saying “we brought this upon ourselves.” He declined to explain more of how this happened (the team statement on Monday said that Jax “unintentionally” came across Sanders’ phone number on his father’s open iPad).

Ulbrich said that he was in the process of determining the community service that he and Jax would take part in to make amends but promised that there will be action.

All in all, Ulbrich handled the appearance about as well as you could want and certainly about as well as Jax could want.

Ulbrich faced the media. He took full responsibility for his and his son’s actions. He took questions. He seemed to be genuinely remorseful.

While it was an organizational decision for Ulbrich to speak Wednesday, it was something he wanted to do, according to the team.

It’s not every day we see such contrition from public figures.

It surely won’t be Jax Ulbrich’s favorite memory of his father. But hopefully this picture of accountability and humility will remain with him for a long time.

And, for that matter, the people really worth praising here are Shedeur and Deion Sanders. They had every opportunity to let Ulbrich twist in the wind when he tried reaching out or to use the many platforms available to them to spew venom and bury the Ulbrichs.

Who could have blamed them?

Dropping into the fifth round after being widely expected to go in the first, Shedeur Sanders had had a bad enough week as it was. He had a wide-open opportunity to dump his pain onto Jax Ulbrich but passed.

Ulbrich’s media appearance resonated with me, especially that sigh. As a father, I’ve been in his shoes (minus the TV cameras and prying reporters), having to apologize for something dumb my kids did. And I’m sure I put my parents in the same position when I was a young doofus.

I know this much. As long as there are young people, there will always be feats of incomprehensible idiocy.

As much as the lesson for Jax Ulbrich and any other young person is to avoid them, maybe the more meaningful one is to forgive them.