There were a lot of surprises in the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday night. The Titans taking Carnell Tate at No. 4? Unexpected. Caleb Downs, Rueben Bain, and Makai Lemon all sliding? Shocking — but it was what the Los Angeles Rams did with the No. 13 overall pick that was truly jaw-dropping, selecting Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson to be their signal caller of the future. We gave the pick a C+ grade.
It’s not that Simpson is bad, or even that the Rams taking him wasn’t on the cards. In fact, for a long time there was speculation the team would take Simpson in the 1st round, just at No. 29, until Los Angeles traded the pick for Trent McDuffie. The confusion around the selection is aimed more at the fact that taking a quarterback to prepare for the eventuality of Matthew Stafford’s retirement was too cute, and too smart for its own good — especially when the Rams are a team built to win right now.
This only got worse following the draft when coach Sean McVay looked flat-out annoyed while hearing GM Les Snead wax poetic about Ty Simpson.
Sure, this could just be “resting coach face” from McVay, but this is not the look of a man who is excited about the team’s top pick. He said almost nothing during the presser, and his comments following the draft didn’t exactly assuage fears that he wasn’t on board with the selection.
“We’ve talked about the importance of Jimmy [Garoppolo]. To be able to add somebody that you can evaluate a body of work where he was asked to play the position and a lot of things that do translate in terms of concepts, reading with his feet, some of the different things in the drop back in the play-action game and the movement game. There are a lot of things that [Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan] Grubb did that’s very similar to how we operate, so it made it an easier evaluation to be able to say, ‘Alright, what would that look like if he did translate it to our level?’”
Here’s another clip from McVay’s post-draft presser:
The most generous reading of these comments is that McVay is fine with the pick. His verbiage is more akin to how coaches talk about day three picks, not someone you take No. 13 overall. This is especially notable considering the board at the time, which could have landed the Rams someone like Makai Lemon or Kenyon Sadiq, either of whom would have bolstered the Rams passing attack — or even safety Dillon Thieneman, who would have been an upgrade to the secondary.
It’s going to be at least two years before we learn whether or not picking Simpson was a genius move or not, but there are more questions about the pick after people learned that Snead had personal entanglements with the Simpson family.
It’s only natural to question whether or not Snead had tunnel vision for Simpson throughout this process. One would think that a general manager and head coach’s vision naturally aligns, but this is a case where it might not. Snead’s job is to be more forward-looking at the overall health of the franchise, while McVay’s is to get the most out of the guys he has in front of him. There very well could have been friction about seeing the Falcons’ pick (which they obtained in 2025) as a means to land a quarterback, with the expectation that they’ll otherwise be picking in the back-end of the 20s, or hopefully 32 — while McVay didn’t want to put the cart in front of the horse, and instead get someone that would help prevent the Rams from flaming out in the playoffs.
What makes this all so interesting is that the Rams are typically an organization held up as a paragon of vision and smart decision-making. Selecting Simpson could end up being genius, or a bizarrely desperate move to get a second-round QB talent too early in the draft, just to correct a problem that doesn’t exist yet.
When Simpson does eventually take over for the Rams at QB, he’ll have barely played football at all since leaving high school:
One thing is certain: If the Rams fail to make it to the Super Bowl this season, then everyone will be looking at who could have helped the team with this No. 13 pick — and it won’t be Ty Simpson.