2026 NFL Draft: Inside Ty Simpson’s Rise from Alabama Backup to Likely First-Rounder

For a prospect like Ty Simpson, the NFL Combine was one of the busiest weeks of his life. It is, after all, the world’s most intense job fair, where NFL teams line up prospects to take MRIs and X-rays — of everything — before grilling them with questions about the good, bad and most scrutinized plays from their college careers. But at its core, the combine is a football convention, and that seemed to suit Simpson. One day at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, he walked from a podium, where he had addressed a gaggle of 20-something reporters, to a one-on-one interview with a national outlet. In between those two obligations, multiple reporters tried to get their own one-on-one, if only for a question or two. Because if you’re a quarterback who might land in Round 1 of the NFL Draft, everyone wants a moment of your time. I asked: What’s your favorite throw of your career? “It would have been to win the Iron Bowl,” Simpson told me. “So the play call was, ‘Three echo right limbo rocker stick return X-step.’ They played drop-eight [coverage]. I hit Zay [Isaiah Horton] on the cross down the middle, because he split them against man. It was cool because, one, it was against Auburn in the Iron Bowl — something that was very cool, and something that I dreamed about. And then two, it was to send us to the SEC Championship.” Tell me you’re a coach’s son without telling me you’re a coach’s son. Jason Simpson, Ty’s father, is the head coach at the University of Tennessee at Martin and has been since 2006. That’s why football jargon might be the language that’s most comfortable for the former Alabama QB. It’s right there alongside English as Ty’s first language. Despite Simpson’s lineage, there are a lot of reasons for NFL teams not to select him in the first round of the 2026 draft. He’s 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds, which is on the smaller side for a QB, especially one who last season fractured a rib and also dealt with a severe case of gastritis, a bulging disc in his back and elbow bursitis. And that was his only full season as a starter during his four years at Alabama. Fifteen starts is too few to get a real sense of who he can be in the pros. And though he had a deeply impressive eight-game run in the heart of his season, he posted a 57% completion rate over his final four games — against Auburn, Georgia, Oklahoma and Indiana. Any team that drafts Simpson is likely thinking he could be their starter in 2027 — not 2026. Any team that drafts Simpson is likely thinking he’s an excellent developmental prospect, in part because of his acumen for the game — driven by the fact that he grew up a coach’s son. As Simpson’s draft-day projection has become a lightning rod of discussion, he and his family maintain a steady confidence in what’s to come. Ty had more college eligibility and could have made millions in the transfer portal. But Jason told me that, even before the draft process began to unfold, he had “multiple conversations” with Ty about life after college. “I joked with Ty: ‘You’ve already graduated. You’ve got your master’s [degree], so at some point, you got to go to work and get a job. And if it looks like you got a chance to go in the first round, maybe this is something that you do. You come out,'” Jason told me. Simpson declared for the draft in January. He will be in Pittsburgh on April 23. But even now, no one seems to agree where he’ll land. No one except maybe Simpson himself. Appearing on “Jon Gruden’s QB Class,” Simpson was asked who the Raiders should take at No. 1 overall, Fernando Mendoza or him. Simpson replied: “You know the answer.” *** Always, there was what the Simpson family called a “greaseboard” attached to the refrigerator. Until there wasn’t. Anytime Ty and Jason were in the kitchen, that whiteboard didn’t stay attached to the refrigerator for long. They plucked it from its place, and one of them would begin to draw up plays. Dad tested son. Then son tested dad. “He would challenge me to draw formations, and then I’d ask him questions of, ‘Draw up a 4-2 defense. Draw up a 4-3 defense. Draw up a quarters coverage,’” Jason told me. “And he would draw them up when he was a little kid, and so that’s just how he’s been wired as a person.” Jason told me he didn’t plan for his sons Ty or Graham, a highly-ranked 2028 recruit, to become quarterbacks. It just happened. And maybe that’s so. But there’s no doubt that Jason had something to do with Ty’s acumen for the game. In fact, Ty’s high school coach, Jarod Neal, played QB for Jason at UT Martin. Because of that cycle of coaching, Simpson’s high school ran the same system and used the same verbiage as Jason’s program at UT Martin. As a result, the father-son chalk-talk conversations were seamless. All the way up until Alabama. That’s when the continuity broke. That’s when Simpson had to become his own man. “My dad wasn’t in the building. My dad wasn’t there,” Simpson said at the combine podium in March. “I talked to him and asked him for guidance, and he gave me his two cents, but it was all on me. So everything that I had dealt with in my career, it was all based off what I did, and based off how I reacted, and that’s life in general.” As a recruit, Simpson had been thrilled at the idea of playing for Nick Saban, who landed the QB despite offers from in-state Tennessee and Clemson, among others. Any time Saban called, Ty would drop what he was doing and give the legendary Bama coach his full attention and professionalism. They were a natural match for each other, Ty’s mother, Julie Simpson, told me. Which was why it must have been hard for Simpson to say goodbye to Saban, who retired from coaching after the 2023 season. Former Washington coach Kalen DeBoer took over. Simpson stayed. And in his fourth college season (after three different offensive coordinators and three different QB coaches), Simpson finally got his opportunity to play. “It’s easy to root for him,” DeBoer told me. “First of all, just with how he stayed the course here, and competed, but waited for his time, and kept improving during the first three years he was here. And so he’s easy to root for in that way.” It was in his season as a starter that DeBoer learned what Simpson was made of. “There’s understanding of the situation, and Ty’s a coach’s kid and has been around a lot of football, and so I think he can process that,” DeBoer told me. “There’s got to be a lot of belief and confidence, and there’s experiences that he’s either seen or went through himself, that probably allow him to be able to just focus on the moment and not let it be too big.” Like against Auburn — for Simpson’s favorite throw. Or against Oklahoma — for DeBoer’s favorite throw by Simpson. There was a go-ahead, 30-yard touchdown pass to receiver Lotzeir Brooks at the beginning of the second half. Simpson hit Brooks on the shoulder in a spot where the defender fell over backward trying (and failing) to make a play. Alabama would go on to upset Oklahoma. Or Simpson’s entire game against Georgia back in September. “It’s been great to see that growth, but not surprising,” said Nick Sheridan, former Alabama co-offensive coordinator and current Michigan State OC. “As a coach, you see this fairly regularly. You see an 18-year-old kid turn into a 22-year-old man, and what that looks like, and certainly the growth that occurred for him at Alabama, a lot of people deserve a lot of credit for that — certainly nobody more than Ty.” It’s easy to forget that Simpson’s first start was a disappointment. In the 2025 season opener, he went 23-of-43 (53.5%) for 254 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-17 loss to unranked Florida State. It caught the Alabama world off guard. Frankly, it didn’t make any sense — not even in hindsight. And it led to a tremendous amount of criticism at the outset of Simpson’s season. Following that loss, he started exceeding expectations — and people kept moving the goal posts. But when Simpson and the Crimson Tide upset Georgia (then No. 5 in the country) in Week 4, it was hard to deny that he had arrived. “He’s going to get the criticism that he gets just because of the position. And so then you think, well, he’s going to redeem himself,” Julie told me. “Waiting on him to come out of the locker room after the Georgia game, and him coming out and just looking at me with that grin. It was like, ‘There! Now I showed them what I can do.’ That’s probably my favorite memory [of his college career].” Jason couldn’t be there for that game. (He missed most of his son’s games, because both their teams play on Saturday.) But there was a tent on the UT Martin field that had a TV, which showed the Georgia-Alabama game. And though Jason was calling offensive plays for his team, he did what he could to keep an eye on the Bama score. “Kinda distracting, right?” Jason said, with a chuckle. But on Oct. 18, Jason didn’t have to worry about that distraction. UT Martin had a 1:30 p.m. ET kickoff against Gardner-Webb in North Carolina. And Alabama hosted Tennessee at 6:30 p.m. CT. It was feasible that Jason could complete his game — and make it to Bryant-Denny Stadium in time for kickoff. UT Martin throttled Gardner-Webb 37-7. And by 5:37 p.m. CT, he was on the field in Tuscaloosa. “He and I embraced before the game. For me to win, professionally, my game, but get to go be a dad and watch him, that was a really cool day,” Jason told me. “That was a good day for the Simpson family.” There’s a real significance to that win that goes beyond the family moment. You have to go way back — so far that Jason didn’t even make the connection at the time. Ty was almost 3 years old when Jason took the job at UT Martin. And so that meant that all of Simpson’s childhood memories came from his time around that football team. “Ty grew up in Hardy Graham Stadium. He grew up in that locker room, and he went to every one of the UT Martin games,” Jason said. “He didn’t know there was a difference between FCS and FBS, right? UT Martin was his Alabama.” But UT Martin was not Alabama. Simpson learned that the hard way. “We played UT Knoxville [University of Tennessee] and, actually, [Ty] got to meet Peyton Manning before the game,” Jason told me. “He was just a little kid. I think they beat us pretty good. I think that was the first time he realized, ‘Oh, their players are a little bigger and stronger and faster than ours.’” There’s still a photo in the Simpson household of Ty crying after that game. “I think that’s when he started realizing, ‘Oh, that’s why their stadiums are bigger than ours,’” Jason said. If only Jason could’ve told Ty he’d be playing in one of those stadiums one day, where he’d get revenge against UT. If only he could tell him that he’s likely to be playing in even bigger stadiums in the NFL. Then again, knowing how much Ty loves his dad and his dad’s team, maybe it wouldn’t have made it any better. That love for the game is one of the many qualities that is sure to help him in the NFL. [2026 NFL Draft Confidential: Unfiltered Scouting Takes On Top 5 QBs] Simpson will attend Day 1 of the draft, and the family remains confident he’ll land in the top 32 picks. “We feel pretty good about the situation that he’s in right now with the teams that we’re having conversations with, and so I’m excited for him,” Jason told me. An NFL team is going to pick him to become its franchise quarterback — down the line, probably keeping him off the field at the start of his pro career. And given that he stuck it out at Alabama and developed patiently behind Bryce Young and Jalen Milroe, there’s no question, at least with the people who know him best, that Simpson can replicate his rise at Alabama. “I think you have to observe guys ahead of you that do it at a high level and then make it your own,” Sheridan told me. “And I think that’s what he’s done [with the Crimson Tide], and I know he’ll continue to do that, because he’s got a love for football. He wants to be as good as he possibly can be. And so he loves to play.” And Simpson proved in 2025 that when the time comes for him to play, he can and will put it all together.