There were 257 picks in the 2026 NFL Draft and the most shocking one definitely came from the Los Angeles Rams, who decided to take Ty Simpson at 13th overall. The Rams already have the reigning NFL MVP on their roster in Matthew Stafford, but despite that fact, they decided to take the Alabama quarterback.
Most NFL fans were stunned by the pick, but Ty Simpson and his family likely weren’t too shocked due to the contact they had with the team leading up to the draft.
This was a pick that was months in the making, so let’s take a look at how it came together.
Rams GM Les Snead meets with Simpson’s family just before the Rose Bowl
The first indication that the Rams were seriously interested in possibly taking Simpson came in late December when the Alabama Crimson Tide were out in Southern California getting ready for their Rose Bowl matchup against Indiana. During the week, Simpson’s family was doing some research on whether it would make more sense for Simpson to stay in college for one more year or to enter the NFL Draft. Due to the amount of NIL money that a quarterback can make, Simpson knew he could potentially make more money in college in 2026 UNLESS he was drafted in the first round, so his family wanted to get a feel on whether there was any chance he would be taken in the first round.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the Miami Hurricanes had a $6.5 million offer on the table for Simpson to play with them 2026, so at that point, if Simpson was going to declare for the draft, he needed to know he was going to be first round pick, otherwise, going to the NFL wouldn’t make much financial sense for him.
The Simpsons became sold on Ty’s chances of being a first-round pick after talking to Les Snead.
“So then they’re out there in L.A. for the Rose Bowl, the Rams actually have Ty Simpson’s parents over to the facility,” Pelissero explained. “They spend time with them. Mom is still on the fence, dad’s gathering all the information, and when they asked, ‘Why should Ty come out in this draft?’ And the answer, and I’m paraphrasing — I wasn’t in the room — from Les Snead was, essentially, ‘because I’m gonna take him with the No. 13 pick.’ Now, there’s nothing binding about a conversation or a text message or advice. But that’s how convicted Les Snead was about Ty Simpson being a franchise quarterback in the NFL.”
At that point, Ty clearly felt confident about his chances of being taken in the first round, because six days after the Rose Bowl, he declared for the NFL Draft.
Simpson’s secret meeting with Sean McVay
When it comes to the NFL Draft, the Rams are one of the most secretive teams in the NFL. Head coach Sean McVay and general manager Les Snead DON’T attend the combine (They haven’t been to Indianapolis for the event since 2020). One other unique thing about the Rams is that they don’t do top-30 visits. When a team has a prospect in for a visit, they have to report it to the NFL and that information eventually becomes public, but if you don’t invite anyone in for a visit, then there’s nothing to report.
Although the Rams don’t invite players to their facility, they do travel to visit with players they’re interested in. The difference between that and a top-30 visit is that it doesn’t have to be reported to the NFL, so the team can keep it a secret. At some point during the draft process, that’s what happened with McVay and Simpson.
During an interview Monday on ESPN Radio’s “Amber & Ian,” Simpson revealed how the “secret” meeting went down.
“We tried to keep this under wraps as long as we could,” Simpson said. “It was something to where I knew they were interested, but they wanted to make it private and didn’t want people to know that they were interested. So, I had some secret meetings with Coach McVay, and I was trying to be on script and do what everybody told me and not to tell anybody.”
Simpson was so good at keeping the secret that he didn’t even leak out AFTER being drafted. During a press conference following the first round, Simpson was asked if he had met with anyone in the Rams organization over the past few months and he definitely didn’t mention talking to McVay.
“I met with some scouts in Alabama and that was really it,” Simpson said Thursday. “They talked to my agent but that was really wasn’t much.”
Despite the Rams’ interest, Simpson still wasn’t 100% sure that they would end up taking him, but he did think he was going to go in the first round.
“It was something to where I knew that they were interested, I just didn’t know when,” Simpson said during his radio interview. “I had a lot of confidence in myself and that’s what I decided to come out. If it wasn’t them, I felt like it was going to be somebody else.”
Although McVay and Simpson only had one meeting before the draft, that one meeting lasted for several “hours.”
“We met at the facility and it was something to where we just talked for hours and hours and it was just football, it was just straight football,” Simpson said. “It was like a kid in a candy store. Me and him are sitting there, and we’re just going back and forth. You can tell the obsession he has for the game and you can tell the love he has for quarterback play.”
The meeting with McVay makes all the sense in the world. If the Rams were truly thinking about drafting a quarterback at 13th overall, there’s no way they’d make that move without letting McVay meet him face to face, which is why the Rams coach ended up meeting with the Alabama QB.
“Being with him and then getting to know him and then just seeing a little bit of how I would get coached if I was fortunate enough to go there was something that I couldn’t have asked for a better situation,” Simpson said.
After the meeting, the Rams were very adamant that to Simpson that McVay’s visit needed to stay a secret.
“I was told to not say anything, because they didn’t want anybody to know,” Simpson said. “We had one meeting and we kept it private.”
The Rams also met with Indiana cornerback D’Angelo Ponds in April and he ended up sharing that information with the world just before the draft.
The Rams probably didn’t ask Ponds to keep the meeting a secret, so this isn’t a big deal. However, with Simpson, it was a big deal. If Simpson had shared that he met with the Rams just days before the draft, that could have flipped things upside down. Any team that was in need of a QB going into the draft might have become even more interested in getting Simpson knowing that one of the NFL’s smartest offensive minds (McVay) was after him.
Rams actually wanted to trade out of 13th overall
Although the Rams wanted Simpson, it appears that they would have preferred to take him at a later point in the first round. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the Rams wanted to trade back, but they didn’t receive a single phone call while they were on the clock, so they were forced to take Simpson at 13th overall.
“The Rams were going to try to trade back, that was the plan, hopefully move back to, say, Detroit at 17, get some extra picks and take Ty Simpson there,” Schefter said on his podcast. “When their turn on the clock came, they didn’t get any calls. They had no offers.”
This is an interesting tidbit, because it tells you that the Rams definitely liked Simpson, but they felt that taking him at 13th overall might be a slight reach.
When the pick was announced on draft night, it left everyone stunned. Forty-niners general manager John Lynch had a smirk on his face when he was asked about the Rams’ shocking pick.
As for the Rams, maybe McVay was frustrated that they weren’t able to trade back, but whatever the reason, he definitely seemed to be in a crabby mood during a combined press conference with Snead following the first round.
The Rams coach later admitted that if he came off grumpy, it was because he didn’t want to send the wrong message to Stafford. If McVay had been happy and celebratory during the press conference, that might have left a bad taste in Stafford’s mouth.
“I would have been stoic by nature anyway, just based on the respect for Matthew,” McVay told ESPN. “It’s a unique situation, You get a chance to be able to take a player that you like at a really important position, but you don’t want it to be minimized or misunderstood in terms of what this means in terms of our investment and our commitment to Matthew for as long as he wants to continue to play. And so you’re kind of teetering that line, and clearly, I came off a little grumpier than normal.”
At multiple points over the weekend, McVay made it clear that Stafford will be the starting QB in Los Angeles for as long as he wants to play. Of course, the fact that McVay is already worried about hurting Stafford’s feelings means the head coach is going to have a fine line to walk over the next few years.
Going into the weekend, Simpson hadn’t yet heard from Stafford, but he did get a welcoming message from the reigning MVP’s wife, Kelly.
“I have not [heard from Matthew],” Simpson said. “Kelly [Stafford] has actually texted me on Instagram and welcomed me. She told me to hit her up with my family if we never need anything, but I can’t wait to talk to Matthew. I’m super ecstatic because I just want to pick his brain about everything and soak up all that knowledge.”
This Rams’ decision to draft Simpson is going to be one of the most hotly debated picks over the next few months and into the future, but it doesn’t seem like there was much debate in the Rams’ front office. They wanted their guy and they got him.
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