Analysis | Simpson will put Rams coach McVay’s reputation as a QB whisperer to the test
Hand-picking a quarterback in Cabo San Lucas after that player has already thrown for 45,000 yards and more than 280 touchdowns in the NFL is different from what the Rams did on Thursday night, which is take one with the 13th pick (Ty Simpson out of Alabama) after 31 collegiate games and immediately after his first season as what one would call a full-time starter.
The Rams had Simpson connections, with GM Les Snead advising Simpson’s father, UT Martin head coach Jason Simpson, on why Ty should defer millions of NIL dollars and enter an NFL draft that had largely turned a cold shoulder toward him as a true foil to No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza. I’m sure most quarterbacks would do the same if there was a significant chance that they would be drafted by Sean McVay.
But now we actually get to find out how true the mythos of McVay as a pure developer of quarterbacks really is. This, a season after we learned yet again the fallibility of the NFL’s quarterbacking guru brat pack. Kyle Shanahan waved the white flag on Trey Lance before turning to Brock Purdy. Kevin O’Connell has all but locked J.J. McCarthy out of the building in Minnesota. And the yellow brick road that allowed us to arrive at this moment is now littered with moments that should not make us doubt the truth of Shanahan, O’Connell or McVay’s quarterback coaching prowess, but perhaps tone down the rhetoric.
Let’s take Shanahan as an example. He didn’t wave a wand and conjure an everyday starter out of C.J. Beathard. Jimmy Garoppolo was already a seasoned quarterback when he arrived in San Francisco and helped the 49ers airlift into a realm of perennial contenders (which, when the Garoppolo experiment reached its limits, encouraged the pivot to Lance and, later, Purdy).
O’Connell oversaw breakout seasons in Minnesota from Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold first. Cousins is still a high-end backup and fringe NFL starter who made three Pro Bowls before O’Connell started coaching him. Darnold left Minnesota and won the Super Bowl.
And McVay, who reached the Super Bowl with Goff, traded the former No. 1 pick (a selection that was not his) to pivot to Matthew Stafford, who left the Lions as one of the greatest players in franchise history. McVay earned additional kudos for prepping a spot start by Baker Mayfield on short notice, before Mayfield went on to Tampa Bay and became, well, Baker Mayfield.
I promise I’m not being negative, but it’s important to address the realities of the mythology that we’re building. These coaches are excellent and have redefined the way offensive football is weaponized at the NFL level. We are lucky to have them around the league. But to say that the Simpson pick was a masterstroke, or to fail to acknowledge the inevitable growing pains, is an error that places undue expectations on Simpson much in the way we did McCarthy.
No coach guarantees a steady ascension at the quarterback position. Not even the best offensive coach in the NFL. Is it downright thrilling to think about McVay in a laboratory with Simpson, exposing the quarterback to those legendary Stafford players-only meetings where football is dissected at a post-graduate level, and imagining him slowly animating like a likable NFL Frankenstein? Absolutely. Will we receive tireless reminders that this is how the Chiefs operated with Patrick Mahomes behind Alex Smith? There is no doubt.
But in the interim, we owe it to Simpson, and really McVay, to simply allow the selection to be. We can also freely question whether this was the absolute best use of resources.
The Rams were on a torrid stretch of defensive roster improvement throughout this offseason, adding Jaylen Watson, trading for Trent McDuffie and re-signing Kam Curl. One could argue that offensive line and wide receiver were more immediately pressing needs than a Stafford successor, and would aid the team in its quest to squeeze one last Super Bowl out of Stafford before his eventual retirement. Coincidentally, there was a run on both tackles and wide receivers following the Simpson pick. The Rams were almost certainly getting offers to move off of that selection, given the desperation of several teams to secure what was left of the tackle market specifically.
In addition, I wonder why McVay had the itch to develop a quarterback when he could have almost certainly plucked whichever end-of-career veteran he wanted in perpetuity and never have to deal with the stressors associated with attaching one’s name to a first-round pick (a disastrous branding experience for known QB whisperers, and one that Bruce Arians even mentioned in his book-The Quarterback Whisperer-that he actively tried to avoid). Arians had it made, coasting from the likes of Peyton Manning to Ben Roethlisberger to Andrew Luck to Carson Palmer to Tom Brady (phew). McVay’s light would have attracted moths of that ilk until the end of his coaching days. A dissatisfied late-career Joe Burrow? A reclamation project in C.J. Stroud? Post-Eagles Jalen Hurts? Quarterbacks would take less to play for McVay. Period.
They would do so because out of all of the whisperers, McVay is the monolith.
At least until we see what happens with Simpson.
Simpson not succeeding would not change the fact that McVay is great. But it would challenge the very basis of the move in the first place, at a time when the quarterback whisperer could have used just about anything other than a quarterback.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Ty Simpson Will Put Sean McVay’s Reputation As a QB Whisperer to the Test.
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This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 11:55 PM.