Rams 2026 draft: Ty Simpson would be a ‘J.J. McCarthy’ mistake

If the Los Angeles Rams draft Ty Simpson in the first round for no other reason than he’s considered the best available quarterback, then Les Snead is repeating the same mistake that countless general managers have made since the start of the draft. The Minnesota Vikings made that mistake with J.J. McCarthy two years ago and the comparisons to Simpson are warranted.

For example, McCarthy only threw 713 passes in college, which is half as many as Jayden Daniels. Many non-ESPN draft analysts felt that he was too raw and inexperienced and unproven to draft in the first round.

Simpson has thrown 523 passes in college. He didn’t do anything at Alabama until his fourth season in college and then he was handed the keys to one of the most talented and offensive-focused programs in the country. Even then, Simpson was mediocre, especially down the stretch when the games really mattered:

Over the last 7 games, Simpson completed 60% of his passes with 8 touchdowns, 4 interceptions, and Alabama went 4-3, plus they were demolished by Georgia and Indiana. Simpson’s offense scored a combined 10 points in those two games.

Even so, there’s a major problem with the NFL Draft that the quarterback-starved producer hounds at ESPN are trying to fill with fluff:

Colleges have been producing a far worse product at quarterback over the last 5 years than any other stretch in recent NFL draft history.

The best quarterback in the 2026 class is Fernando Mendoza, himself a prospect who may actually get a worse overall draft grade than J.J. McCarthy if they had been in the same class, but a foregone conclusion at the #1 pick because the Las Vegas Raiders literally have no other choice. If slapped into a class with Caleb Williams, Daniels, and Drake Maye, Mendoza would be an EASY pick for being no better than QB4.

But slotted into the 2022 class or the 2026 class, Mendoza is the best. Of that class.

Where does that leave a quarterback like Simpson, the consensus QB2? Unfortunately for NFL fans who simply want an accurate picture of reality instead of being fed a load of media hype from ESPN’s click-farm desperate to have “QB CONTENTZ” every March/April, it means that Simpson has been shoehorned into place as a an “underrated” quarterback who could even be better than Mendoza.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Dan Orlovsky, who is represented by CAA and Jimmy Sexton (the same agency that represents Ty Simpson), saying that Simpson is “just as good” as Mendoza:

Orlovsky wants fans to believe that if Simpson had more reasons to be a great prospect, he’d be a great prospect, but actually in spite of that he’s a great prospect:

“If Ty Simpson was 6’4, or Ty Simpson had 20-plus or 23 college starts, he would be in play at number two for the New York Jets.”

Orlovsky, who again is at the same agency as Simpson, hard-sells that Simpson is “very much” like Brock Purdy, the last pick of his draft class.

Of course, you may not need any sort of business connection to oversell Simpson from a day 3 prospect to a top-10 prospect. Chase Daniel has no apparent connection to Sexton or CAA but still puts out propaganda that implies Simpson is a first round talent being underrated by the people who are being reasonable:

On his YouTube channel, which I think is generally good, Daniel sought out combine footage to make an argument for Simpson as a first round quarterback. Why do this without a hidden agenda?

Well for the least hidden agenda of all: Clicks.

Saying that a quarterback class sucks or that a fourth round quarterback is simply a fourth round quarterback will not get you any attention. It’s merely what a reasonable person would expect to hear PLUS it’s just not very interesting to the average/mainstream NFL Draft fan who simply doesn’t know anything about the prospects.

We only want to hear about the first round quarterbacks. We do NOT want to hear about any other quarterbacks, right?

Well, how do you make content that people will watch if you don’t think that there’s a single QB prospect worthy of the first round? Or at most you think Mendoza is a good-enough prospect, a Heisman-winner, a national champion, and predestined to go number one regardless of your own analysis. What do you do then?

You PRETEND that there are first round QB prospects!

In 2022, we had all kinds of ESPN/media propaganda claiming that Malik Willis was a top-3 pick, Desmond Ridder was a first round pick, Matt Corral was a first round pick, and Kenny Pickett was a first round pick.

The week of the draft, NFL.com’s Chad Reuter mocked Pickett at 2, Willis at 8, Corral at 12, and Ridder at 16!

Does anyone care that it was outlandishly wrong? Apparently not. It’s just forgotten which is why these draft analysts are so comfortable and confident that all they really need to do is chase immediate clicks, not worry about trying to predict the long-term consequences of being HORRENDOUSLY wrong.

What really happened? Pickett went 20th to the Steelers, as was widely expected regardless of his day 2 resume, and no other quarterback was taken in the first OR second round. Willis and Ridder went late in the third round, and Corral was out of the NFL in a couple short years.

Nobody seems to care how wrong the media was then, or the thousands of hours that ESPN spent trying to convince us that Willis was a top-10 prospect despite his weak resume at Liberty. Similar to Simpson, much of Willis’s resume was built on analysts saying “look at the highlights, look at the cherry picked stats, and look at the combine.”

This is only supposed to fool fans but amazingly it seems even general managers and owners were fooled by pre-draft hype in 2024.

That entire draft season, Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy, and Bo Nix were widely viewed as second/third round prospects. There wasn’t even much of a movement to push a narrative because ESPN could be distracted by Caleb, Daniels, and Maye. Even so, when it came to draft night Penix went 8th, McCarthy went 10th, and Nix went 12th.

Just two years later, both Penix (Tua Tagovailoa) and McCarthy (Kyler Murray) are staring down the end of their careers with the franchises that drafted them because of the addition of veterans who are good enough to take the starting role next season. Minnesota went a step further by re-signing Carson Wentz on Thursday and seemingly giving up on McCarthy even faster than the New York Jets gave up on Zach Wilson.

Now cut to 2025 and what did we see?

An NFL so scorned by bad-intentioned media that Shedeur Sanders fell from “consensus top-10 pick” in mocks to the fifth round in real life. And the media STILL can’t accept that Sanders is just not good.

Will the fans or the owners fall for it this time with Ty Simpson?

It’s impossible to tell, but they shouldn’t.

Where is Simpson ranked really?

Despite a push by Orlovsky and some others to fabricate a strong resume for Ty Simpson, not everyone is on board with the premise. At NFL Mock Draft Database, Simpson isn’t a first round prospect on the consensus big board.

As you can see by the low placement of Garrett Nussmeier, Carson Beck, and Drew Allar, not to mention Taylen Green or Cole Payton who both rank outside the top-130, Simpson’s best argument now is that he’s the middle ground between the one good prospect (and Mendoza is still vastly overrated) and the third-best prospect, whether that’s Nussmeier or Allar or Green or Payton, etc. Nobody really knows yet. The class is that bad.

What’s clear is that if the Rams have ANY designs on drafting Ty Simpson at 13 simply because “he’s a quarterback and people are telling us we need a quarterback”, LA stands just as good of a chance of giving up on him in 2028 as the apparent quitting that the Vikings are doing on McCarthy in 2026.

Not that anyone should blame Minnesota for quitting on McCarthy, one of the worst starters in recent history, but sadly—and every NFL fan SHOULD be worried—a trend we are likely to see continue as long as the NCAA continues to slow down the developmental process for quarterbacks in the NIL and transfer portal era of college sports.

If you’re drafting Simpson because you think he’s got future starter written all over him, you’re wrong.

If you’re drafting Simpson because you’re worried the future quarterback prospects are even worse, then you might just want to trade a seventh round pick for J.J. McCarthy; you can always go get Simpson in a couple of years when he’s being replaced by a veteran.

Read the full article here