The NFC West is an arms race, especially with the top three teams, the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Rams, and San Francisco 49ers. This makes the pressure to be right on free agency and draft decisions even greater. LA, for instance, could be on the verge of taking a player in 2026 that eventually replaces a likely Hall of Famer.
Quite a few draft gurus have linked Alabama's Ty Simpson to the Rams. ESPN's Dan Graziano recently wrote that it is an "open secret" of LA's interest in the QB. If Los Angeles does choose Simpson, they are taking a quarterback at the perfect time.
Teams don't need to draft a QB when they have to have one, but rather, when they don't quite yet do. The Rams have Matthew Stafford behind center currently, and he has had the kind of career that could get him inducted into Canton five years after he retires, but Stafford will be 38 years old during the 2026 season, and one would assume he is closer to the end of his career than the beginning.
Seattle Seahawks could be facing a Ty Simpson-led Rams team eventually
Choosing Simpson would simply be the Rams doing what the Green Bay Packers did with Jordan Love. Love has turned out to be a pretty good quarterback, but when he was chosen in the first round of the 2020 draft, the team still had Aaron Rodgers.
Love sat and learned for a couple of seasons and was a better quarterback because of it. Ty Simpson's career arc could very much be the same. He'd have no better teacher than head coach Sean McVay and no better mentor than Matthew Stafford.
How would Stafford feel about LA taking Simpson? He would likely understand the NFL is a business, but still strive to be QB1 as long as he can. No guarantee exists that Simpson would ever be the quarterback Stafford became, though.
To draft Simpson, the Los Angeles Rams would probably have to use the 13th overall choice to take him. That would mean LA would eschew taking an edge rusher or wide receiver, two positions of relative need for the Rams.
But drafts aren't meant to be one-year fixes, but long-term remedies. Eventually, Matthew Stafford will retire, and adding Ty Simpson would give the team an immediate replacement, potentially a very good one. Simpson has high-end skill, but needs refinement, and with the Rams, he would have the time to do that.
The Seattle Seahawks would eventually transition from trying to slow Stafford to stopping Simpson. To be fair, the former hasn't been very easy so far.
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