Ty Simpson didn’t need to throw at Alabama’s Pro Day. A single br surad pass could have easily hurt his draft stock. But while he enjoyed making final throws at his old teammates, his mind was on something much bigger. Stripping away the field performance, the 23-year-old quarterback made a deeply human confession about his journey.

“I’m going to cry, for sure,” Ty Simpson said of getting called on draft night. “All the adversity I had to deal with through here, I’ve been dreaming of it since I was a kid. The sacrifices my mom and dad had to make. All the hard work. God has blessed me in so many ways. Being able to hear my name being called is super surreal.”

Simpson spent years waiting behind Alabama’s quarterback line before finally getting his shot, so that draft-night emotion is coming from a long and frustrating road. That built serious mental toughness in him. Simpson heard the doubts long before his recent playoff run, and now, facing mixed draft grades, he is not panicking at all. Instead, he’s leaning heavily on the exact same mental framework that kept him focused while waiting his turn at Tuscaloosa.

That patience paid off when he finally got the job, turning in the kind of season that pushed him from a former backup into real NFL draft discussion. Even after a stellar season and a positive NFL combine showing, Ty Simpson still chose to participate in A-Day, showing his dedication to Alabama. And he delivered in front of all 32 NFL teams. At the Hank Crisp Indoor Facility, he went 50-of-55 passing and recorded just two drops. The rest is clean and controlled, where he mixed rhythm throws with deep shots. And he didn’t even play it safe.

Ty Simpson leaned into the high-risk, high-reward reps with tight-window lasers and off-platform shots. He threw risky, tight-window passes not to silence his critics, but because he had already tuned them out completely. Evaluators are currently split on his draft grade, but Ty Simpson treats that noise exactly how his former head coach taught him to.

In his mind, proving you can execute your game matters more than padding a stat sheet, and that mindset came from a warning that’s not unheard of in Alabama. When Nick Saban led the Tide, a term came up known as “rat-poison” in 2017. And you might’ve heard him say so many times since then – don’t eat rat poison. If you’re wondering, the GOAT coach actually defined it. 

“Rat poison is anything that distracts you from doing the things that you need to do to do your job,” he said. “Whether it’s created by the media, the weather, or it could be created by anything.”

Needless to say, Ty Simpson bought into that completely. 

“It’s the same way that I processed you guys (the media) during the end of the year last year,” he said of the hype surrounding his draft projection. “You’ve just got to ignore it and keep playing.”

Nick Saban’s teaching came in the nick of time because right now, Ty Simpson is living in the noise.

Ty Simpson’s NFL draft projection 

On one side, you’ve got analysts like ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky calling Ty Simpson QB1, betting on his poise. On the other hand, evaluators are handing out second- and third-round grades, hesitant to fully buy in. And sitting at the top of the board is Fernando Mendoza, who is widely projected as the No. 1 pick, keeping the former Bama QB in that uncomfortable, uncertain space.

The split among the evaluators is simple: some see a calm and confident passer with arm talent, while others still want to see whether he can stay sharp when the pocket gets messy. But Simpson is treating it like Nick Saban taught him to block it out, go to work, and trust the tape. And after his final Pro Day showing, he doubled down.

“Why not? You let it rip,” he said. “You look at my tape, I make the big-time throws, and I make easy throws. But this is something that is fun. And being able to show off my arm and show off my feet is something I wanted to do. That was something I emphasized to David [Morris], like, ‘Hey, let’s go, show out, have the best Pro Day ever.'”

Contrary to the loud, manufactured confidence, Ty Simpson’s internal belief doesn’t need validation. But depending on who you ask, he is either the safest QB in chaos or a risk not worth a first-round investment. But when draft night finally arrives, none of the projections will matter. And if he’s right and if the tears really come, it’ll be about everything it took to get there.