In his first year, as the starter, Crimson Tide quarterback Ty Simpson responded by pushing his team to the CFP quarterfinals to face Fernando Mendoza’s Indiana Hoosiers. Despite that, Simpson still spent most of this NFL offseason explaining why he can actually throw a football. But on The Breakdown podcast with Chase Daniel, he was finally done with it all.

“Come watch me throw,” Simpson said. “Everybody will refrain from that from now on.  

Ty Simpson, who threw for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns in 2025, didn’t just defend his arm talent, though. He went straight, pointing to what happens against elite NFL defenders.

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“Everybody can sit there and throw in shorts, right?” he asked. “But when you have Myles Garrett, TJ Watt, [or] Maxx Crosby coming off the edge, how can you get your base back and your feet in the ground? That’s something that I feel like I do best.”

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He named the three best edge rushers in the league as a direct answer to whether he can handle pressure. Garrett has two Defensive Player of the Year awards with the Cleveland Browns, and holds the league’s single-season sack record (23.0 sacks last season). Watt held that record previously with the Pittsburgh Steelers and has led the league in sacks for two straight seasons (2020, 2021). And Crosby posted 10.0 sacks last season, despite the Las Vegas Raiders going a dismal 3-14.

“It’s preposterous how people view me when they hadn’t seen me in person and seen what I could do,” Simpson rounded off his answer.

There’s evidence behind that confidence. Per Pro Football Focus, Simpson posted a 75.3% adjusted completion rate in 2025, 15th out of 57 qualifiers. What’s more, in his first nine games of the season, he posted a 21-1 touchdown-interception ratio, and finished the final six with a 7-4 TD-INT ratio. But CBS Sports’ scouting report cuts at the exact thing he claims to do best: avoiding the pass rush.

“Handling of pass rush pressure was inconsistent,” the report noted. “There were times when Simpson stayed poised in the pocket with chaos around him and delivered a strike, and others when pressure became a major issue.”

Simpson notably drifted out of clean pockets, sensed pressure that wasn’t there, and his off-target rate under pressure sat at 23.5%. His final six games (after a herniated disc, cracked rib, and elbow bursitis) tell the other story: 60.4% completions, with just 6.5 yards per attempt.

The injuries explain some of the drop, but not all of it. The arm strength doubts and the pressure numbers both point to the same question: Is Ty Simpson’s profile worth a first-round pick? For SI’s Albert Breer, the answer to that comes from another quarterback.

The Purdy parallel for Ty Simpson

Appearing on The Rich Eisen Show, Albert Breer drew parallels between the current quarterback draft class and the existing NFL signal callers. He compared Fernando Mendoza to Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff and Ty Simpson to San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. But it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“The comp I hear for Fernando Mendoza is Goff, where the comp I hear for Simpson is Brock Purdy,” Breer said. “And then the question becomes, are you comfortable taking somebody with a Brock Purdy profile in the first round? A lot of teams aren’t.”

CBS Sports’ scouting report also lands on the same page. Purdy is their official NFL comparison for Simpson, ranking him as the No. 2 quarterback and No. 33 overall on the draft board.

“Brock Purdy is a valid comparison because he’s smart, mobile, accurate, and even a bit of a gunslinger himself,” the report adds. “It wouldn’t be surprising at all if Simpson eventually was a multi-year starter with some success like Purdy.”

The purdy comparison might be treated as a question of Ty Simpson’s ceiling, but that’s inaccurate. Purdy was the “Mr. Irrelevant” who went 262nd overall, inherited Kyle Shanahan’s offense, and had Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk in place, while Christian McCaffrey arrived through the 2022 NFL draft before him. Purdy’s rise is undeniable, but it came pre-loaded with a winning system and a strong roster. A team drafting Simpson in the late first round could hand him a similar situation to build on.

Interestingly enough, one of Purdy’s own scouting reports had claimed he was “not a very good athlete… limited arm, both in strength and throw repertoire.” Last season, that same quarterback matched his career-best record of a 69.4% completion rate from 2023. 

What Simpson actually has, the pre-snap processing, pocket footwork, and decision-making speed, don’t show up in a combine measurement. CBS calls him “one of the best pre- and post-snap processors” the evaluator has seen in years. Those traits hold up in the long run, and whoever drafts him at No. 33 will be betting on those skills paying off like Purdy.