Rams shock NFL, draft Ty Simpson after secret McVay meeting

The Rams did more than take a quarterback with the No. 13 pick. By keeping Ty Simpson’s pre-draft meeting with Sean McVay under wraps, they showed how much of the draft now depends on secrecy, selective leaks and teams trying to control the information market before they ever go on the clock.

Simpson later said he and McVay met once before the draft and talked for “hours and hours,” after first describing his contact with Los Angeles as brief and mostly limited to scouts at Alabama. He said the Rams wanted their interest kept private, and he followed that request. In a league where every hint can move a board, that kind of silence is part strategy and part leverage.

The pick itself landed with force. Los Angeles drafted Simpson on April 23, 2026, making him the likely successor to Matthew Stafford, who won the 2025 NFL MVP award. McVay immediately tried to calm any notion of a quarterback controversy, saying, “This is Matthew’s team.” He also said the Rams had told Stafford they planned to take Simpson at No. 13, and Stafford reacted positively. Les Snead said he and McVay were “in lockstep,” underscoring how tightly the organization managed the message around a move that could have easily become a public fracture.

The Rams’ approach also revealed how little certainty still surrounds quarterback evaluation. Simpson arrived with only 15 college starts at Alabama, the fourth fewest by a first-round quarterback over the past 25 years, behind Anthony Richardson, Mitchell Trubisky and Dwayne Haskins, and ahead of Mark Sanchez. Still, he completed 64.5 percent of his passes for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns in his final season. For Los Angeles, the bet was not just on production; it was on what McVay and Snead believed they could see in private that other teams either missed or were never meant to see.

The franchise has not drafted a quarterback in the first round since it traded up for Jared Goff in 2016, and the Simpson pick put the Rams in unusual company. ESPN noted they became the first team since the 1967 Packers to follow an MVP quarterback with a first-round quarterback selection in the next draft, when Green Bay took Don Horn after Bart Starr’s 1966 MVP season. That history gives the move a sharper edge: the Rams did not just draft for the future, they did it while publicly insisting the present still belongs to Stafford.