El Chapo Jr
Legend
Hey guys -
Do you think Ty Simpson will be a good QB?
...asking for a friend.
Rams: (#13) 1st Round QB Ty Simpson SIGNED
- Thread starter Memphis Ram
- Start date
-
To unlock all of features of Rams On Demand please take a brief moment to register. Registering is not only quick and easy, it also allows you access to additional features such as live chat, private messaging, and a host of other apps exclusive to Rams On Demand.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #2,762
We looked at a play from the Tennessee game earlier. Just to illustrate, I pulled a couple from early in the South Carolina game. If we went through his entire tape, we could find more, but it isn't necessary to do an exhaustive list of every single time Simpson does it.
Play 1: With 6:16 left in the 1st quarter, Alabama has the ball on their own 41, 3rd&4. There is a bunch set to the L. The TE to the R will chip block before releasing on an arrow route to the flat. The RB stays in to help pass block.
After the snap, the LB sees the RB staying in and comes on a green dog. The TE is wide open, there is nobody on him. The pocket is good, there isn't any pressure. Simpson's eyes never comes off the L side of the field, he never considers looking at the TE. He sees a gap open on the L side of the OL and decides to try to run for the 1st down. There is no reason to do this. All he has to do is turn his head to the R side of the field and throw a very simple dump pass to the TE near the LOS to get the first down.
When Simpson takes off running, the "door closes on him" and the defenders pincer, closing the gap so what initially looked like an inviting opening doesn't end up materializing and QB gets sacked one yard behind the LOS.
This wasn't a difficult read, but Simpson lacked the patience and pocket composure to finish reading the progression. Instead of a simple 3rd down conversion, now it is 4th down. Like I said, he has a hyperactive, twitchy play style where he constantly wants to move even in some situations where he'd be better off settling his feet and staying in the pocket.
Play 2: There is 12:28 left in the 2nd quarter. Ryan Williams is coming across the field on a deep over route and has leverage, with plenty of open space ahead of him, an easy throw for the QB. The pass blocking is good, nice pocket for the QB, no pressure. Exactly simultaneously with when the QB should be throwing the pass to Williams, Simpson for unknown reasons decides that he needs to get out of the pocket. He moves forward, turns his shoulders the wrong way so now he's facing the wrong direction and not in position to throw a pass, then extends outside of the pocket to his left. He takes at least 7 steps before he gets his shoulders back around and completes a pass on the run, hitting Williams on the left sideline for a nice gain. All of that movement was unnecessary. QB should have just thrown the ball on schedule to the WR. Being late with the throw made it a more difficult pass and gave the defense an opportunity to recover, but college defenses aren't as good as the NFL, so you can get away with some of those things and it doesn't end up impacting the result.
Similar to what happened with Play 1, above, Simpson's wasted steps with his feet cause him to not throw the route on schedule within the structure of the progression. Even if QB had visually recognized WR come open, his shoulders are pointed the wrong way to throw the ball. Carson Wentz did this often when he was in college.
When I say that Simpson sometimes gets "happy feet", plays like those above are what I mean. QB doesn't need to move so much, the pockets were good. OL did their jobs. Instead of standing tall or subtle movements, Simpson moves way too far, leaving good pockets when he should have delivered easy passes from inside the pocket.
I could have sworn that Simpson only started one year of college and everyone knew he would need a couple years to further develop & be an NFL quarterback. That’s the reason the Rams drafted him - to learn & develop behind the MVP and future HOF for 2-3 years. As well as learning from our great coaches.
I didn’t realize as a 1st year college QB and now an NFL rookie that he’s a finished product.
Who knew?
I didn’t realize as a 1st year college QB and now an NFL rookie that he’s a finished product.
Who knew?
I'm stunned as well. Didn't we Draft Ty to START this year??? Why isn't he starting?
On another note, after hearing about what Ty did in the Tennessee game regarding his progressions I am declaring him a bust.
Do Sean McVay and Les Snead even KNOW what to look for in a Quarterback???
That is a fair criticism and something others here have noted. Maybe, and I am not making excuses for him, playing behind that relatively terrible Alabama OL (which did not hold up like that much of the time) led to him developing bad habits?
Habits can be corrected, developed and made new, as they are not strictly based on ability. He has plenty of abilities to make me think he’s a great prospect
If showing more maturity and a stronger conviction in others executing more consistently are his two worst problems he’s going to be just fine
Why are we looking at college games when he has game tape from the NFL exhibition season? I don't care what happened in college... he looked excellent in his pro "debut" and he will only get better under Stafford and McVay. Keep the faith my brother.
WestCoastRam
Legend
Because college tape is far more definitive than a handful of snaps that were mostly boots against vanilla defenses and backup players.
Channelling my inner Jourdan here, two things can be true at the same time: there's a number of things to criticize in Ty's game as a potential starting QB in this league and he's also shown some of the tantalizing skill set that made him a high pick in the draft.
Is it me or do we have a few fans on record saying, Simpson isn't going to make it?
Of course it could just be, "sometimes he does this" or "sometimes he does that"?
I remember a few years back, a QB in the middle of his 13th season, during a game vs the Titans with the score 3-0 Tennessee, getting spun around by a DL on his own goal line, when he decided to blindly throw the ball directly into the hands of a DB at the 8 yard line. It was returned to the 2 and one play later it was 10-0. On the very next possession, on the first play of that possession, he threw a pick 6 to make it 17-0 Tennessee. Currently, that QB is considered one of the best while under pressure and is just about everybody's hero.
I will wait to see how Simpson is developed by McVay and Co., and watch how he plays when he eventually becomes the guy under center before judging whether he's got the cahones to play QB in the NFL.
Does "looking at the Tennessee game" (the 7th game in the kids college career) tell us anything about his ability to learn and develop? A game in which he went 19 of 29 for 253 with 2 TD and 0 Int, that was a 37-20 win.
Last edited:
I suppose we can learn something from games he might not have played very well in but what about some other games where he might have played well? Like......
Beating Georgia (24 of 38; 276 yds; 2 TD 0 Int 141.5)_
Or Missouri (23 of 31; 340 yds; 3 TD 0 Int 160.3)
How about S.Carolina.....24 of 43; 253, 2 TD 0 Int 120.6....stats not very impressive but trailing by 8 with 10 minutes left led 2 scoring drives to win by 7.
Or Auburn....19 of 35; 122; 3 TD 0 Int 111.9.....won on a 4th quarter TD with 3:50 remaining.
I get that he might not have gone through his progressions sometimes. Or that he made bad decisions sometimes. Or that he didn't make a good throw sometimes. But what fucking QB in the history of football hasn't done the same?
You know the factors that are going to determine what kind of NFL QB Simpson turns out to be? What he learns from McVay and Stafford and how he applies it. In other words, how he plays once he gets the chance. It's certainly not going to be determined by what conclusions are arrived at by fans analyzing his play in college.
This line of discussion started with me making a comment about Simpson's last exhibition game. So, another poster suggested that Simpson didn't do this when he was in college, posting game video, which is why I responded by discussing other plays from his Alabama games. So, if you want to break down his exhibition games, we could do that, but that's exactly what made other posters get mad at me in the first place.
It is like we keep moving the goalposts just to try to avoid discussing areas where Simpson could improve. Why do we have to do that? The guy's a rookie. It is perfectly normal for a rookie to need to get better. Did you watch Josh Allen as a rookie with the Bills? He was a "bad" QB that year. Look at his stats. He had more INTs than TDs. There's a specific play I remember that season where he tried to throw a dump off pass to the flat and threw it into the ground. Horrible accuracy. Allen had a 67.9 passer rating that year, 32nd in the NFL. He was nearly 10 points lower than Sam Darnold for the Jets. He made incompetent Blake Bortles with the Jags look like a good QB. I think Josh Allen is doing fine these days. It doesn't matter how you start. If you get better, nobody will remember those days. In the middle of his 4th NFL season, quite a few people were calling Eli Manning a bust. The NYG won the Super Bowl later that same season, the "helmet catch" SB.
As ARod might say, people need to breathe, just R-E-L-A-X. This is a long journey. We're not even to mile marker one on the road trip.
Simpson had a ton of injuries as the season went on. He deserves credit for his toughness and playing hurt. It seemed to me that his injuries impacted his mechanics. In addition, I think that maybe he felt safer on the move and wanted to protect his body from getting hit and getting hurt even more.
Using two examples of a player leaving the pocket early to argue that he has poor pocket presence is like using two bad throws to argue that a QB is inaccurate. The existence of a few negative examples doesn't necessarily establish a consistent weakness.
The real question is how frequently does the issue occur, and is it actually a recurring problem in his game? That's the distinction between identifying isolated mistakes and identifying a legitimate trait.
With Ty Simpson, I don't think the evidence supports the idea that poor pocket presence is a consistent problem. You can point to a couple of plays where he left the pocket early, but that doesn't mean he routinely abandons clean pockets, fails to work through pressure, or lacks the patience to operate from within the pocket. If we're going to label something a weakness, we should be looking at the overall tendency rather than cherry-picking two plays that support the conclusion.
Listen, we are going to win the Super Bowl this year. THEN Stafford and maybe AD are going to play one more year just to see if they can go back to back. Simpson could very well get his first playing time in year 3.
He can just sit on the bench, soak it all in and practice.
I don't see fail in the guy.
He can just sit on the bench, soak it all in and practice.
I don't see fail in the guy.
Last edited:
That is what I actually said about Ty Simpson when we first talked about the issues with his pocket movement. I feel like people are putting words in my mouth.
Just because a QB can get better at something doesn't mean that he's "bad" at it.
WestCoastRam
Legend
Fair enough. I haven't gone that far back in this thread and it's obviously going to appear when a poster keeps harping on one issue that they're implying that he's "bad" at it.