Ty Simpson

The Player

Ty Simpson is the son of a college football coach—his father, Jason, has been head coach at UT Martin for 20 years. Ty is an undersized and inexperienced quarterback prospect with an elite mind for the game, outstanding anticipatory accuracy, and plus (but not great) arm strength and pocket maneuverability.

Simpson was a five-star recruit who waited his turn for three years at Alabama while developing behind Bryce Young and Jalen Milroe. After appearing in 16 games and attempting 50 passes during his first three seasons, Simpson became Alabama’s full-time starter in 2025 and led the Crimson Tide to the second round of the CFP and an 11-4 record while completing 64.5 percent of his passes, with a TD:INT ratio of 5.6:1 (28-5). 

Simpson has excellent command and conviction both pre-and post-snap. He understands coverage and processes at an extraordinarily high level (not just for a one-year starter, but for any college QB prospect). An underdiscussed aspect of his game is how he schedules his throws—he has excellent urgency and depth on his drops and brilliantly ties his feet and eyes to the play concept. He exhibits outstanding pocket manipulation, has plus foot quickness and suddenness and has the ability to extend plays with his feet. 

He has plus velocity on intermediate throws and drills the ball into tight windows. He has good enough energy on balls thrown outside the numbers. What’s outstanding is his short-to-intermediate accuracy. He throws with anticipation, hits spots, and leads receivers open. He has an excellent natural feel. His tape has some beautiful deep balls, but his placement on those throws can be erratic. He’s far less consistent with his placement on downfield shots than he is with the short to intermediate stuff. 

Simpson can be aggressive to a fault. While his anticipation and understanding of play concepts comprise one of his greatest strengths, it can become a fatal flaw when he doesn’t account for unforeseen factors like a defender’s adjustment or a play getting off-script. He sometimes appears to be unable to deviate from the play design as it’s drawn up on the whiteboard. He also needs to learn when to adapt his trajectory and layer certain throws more to give his receiver a better chance to make a play. That should come with more experience, but ideally those reps would occur before he gets to the NFL. 

Simpson’s play severely declined during the final six games of the season, when he completed just 61 percent of his throws with four INTs (67 percent with just one INT in first nine games). There are four significant factors that contributed to his dropoff: 1) Alabama’s run game ranked 125th in the FBS; 2) Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables provided a blueprint for defeating the Tide’s protection in their November matchup; 3) Simpson was dealing with multiple ailments due to taking too many hits (a byproduct of the first two factors), including gastritis that caused his weight to dip to 190 pounds by season’s end; 4) His star WR, Ryan Williams, all but disappeared, catching just 13 passes for 161 yards and zero TDs during the team’s final six games (and six of those catches came in the CFP loss to Indiana). 

The Draft

Simpson will be QB2 in the 2026 NFL draft after Fernando Mendoza. It’s likely he will hear his name called between picks no. 25 and 40. 

The Projection

Simpson’s NFL projection is challenging. On one hand, his tape during the first nine games of the season was better than any quarterback’s in the country, including Mendoza. He’s as advanced mentally as any quarterback I’ve evaluated since Joe Burrow. His arm has plenty of juice, his anticipatory accuracy is outstanding, and I love his pocket manipulation and suddenness. On the other hand, Simpson is an undersized prospect whose body did not hold up during his one season as a starter and he enters the NFL with 15 collegiate starts. The list of RD1 QBs with fewer than 20 college starts is scary; it includes Anthony Richardson, Mitch Trubisky, Trey Lance, Dwayne Haskins and Mark Sanchez. 

Simpson is best suited to play in a West Coast system (think of NFL coaches like Kyle Shannahan, Sean McVay, Kevin O’Connell, Mike LaFleur, and Mike McDaniel). He’s a coach’s son, has been around ball his entire life, and has a brilliant football mind. If he’s put in the right situation, Simpson can develop into a good starting quarterback in the league. But his inexperience makes him an outlier and he’s not a transcendent talent, which is why he won’t be a top-20 pick in this draft.