One of the biggest surprises during the 2026 NFL draft happened when the Rams used the 13th overall pick on quarterback Ty Simpson. Then came the twist: Rams coach Sean McVay seemed sullen, disinterested, and/or disengaged when he and G.M. Les Snead met with reporters to discuss the decision.
What did Simpson think of McVay’s press-conference demeanor from draft night?
“I didn’t really see it,” Simpson said Saturday, via Gary Klein of the Los Angeles Times.
“I know one thing though,” Simpson said. “I know Coach McVay has been in contact and he’s super fired up. And I’m super excited. . . . I know that I couldn’t have asked for a better situation, not only with the best player in the league in front of me but the best coach in the league at the helm.”
McVay admitted the next day that he was “grumpy” during the press conference. Chris Simms, who saw McVay during a recent visit to an Arsenal match in London, said recently on PFT Live that McVay told him the vibe “had to do with some sort of volatile situation that happened before they went out there,” and that “there was some little argument about something.”
It’s hard to imagine Simpson wasn’t aware of one of the most talked-about moments from the first night of the draft, especially since it directly related to him. Then again, maybe Simpson chose his words carefully. Maybe he didn’t “see” it. Surely, someone told him about it.
Or maybe he did see it. And maybe he was asked not to discuss it. That’s what happened when he had a “secret meeting” with McVay before the draft.
Rams Clips
The NFL will announce the full 2026 schedule on Thursday, May 14, but the league’s international slate of games will be revealed earlier than the domestic ones.
The matchups for this year’s international games will be announced on NFL Network at 9 a.m. eastern time on Wednesday.
Nine international games are on the docket this year, but the matchups for two of them have already been announced. The 49ers and Rams will meet up in Melbourne in Week 1 and the Cowboys will face the Ravens in Rio in Week 3.
One team in each of the other seven games is already known. The Jaguars will play in London twice and the Commanders will be involved in the city’s third game. The 49ers will be in Mexico City, the Falcons will be in Madrid, the Lions will be in Munich and the Saints will take part in the NFL’s first game in Paris.
Chris Simms spent most of the past week in London. On Saturday night, Simms attended an Arsenal match. Also present was Rams coach Sean McVay.
Simms returned to the U.S. on Wednesday. On Thursday’s PFT Live, he said he spoke to McVay about the press conference following the Rams’ unexpected decision to make quarterback Ty Simpson the 13th overall pick in the 2026 draft. McVay explained to Simms why McVay seemed surly.
“The reason he in the press conference was pissed off had neither to do with him acting or the pick but had to do with some sort of volatile situation that happened before they went out there,” Simms said. “There was some little argument about something. He assured me it was nothing like major, but he was a little peed off right there at that moment. That’s what he told me. I don’t think he’d have any problem with me sharing that.”
McVay seemed more than a little pissed off in the moment. (The following day, he conceded that he was “grumpy” at the time.)
Some believed McVay acted upset in order to ensure that the right message was sent to incumbent quarterback Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL MVP. A team hasn’t drafted the potential replacement for the league MVP in the first round since 1967, when the Packers drafted quarterback Don Horn after Bart Starr was named league MVP for 1966.
The first game of the 2026 season will be televised by NBC, on Wednesday, September 9. The second game of the 2026 season will stream.
According to The Athletic, the 49ers-Rams game from Australia will be televised by Netflix.
It becomes the third Netflix game of 2026. Currently, Netflix handles two Christmas games.
The move meshes with Netflix’s desire to handle big events. With the NFL reportedly splitting four games it absorbed from ESPN between Netflix and YouTube, Netflix will be in line to get one more game for 2026.
The biggest new event for 2026 will be the first-ever Thanksgiving Eve game, which is expected to debut this year.
There are now two more known candidates for the Vikings’ General Manager vacancy.
According to multiple reports, Minnesota has put in requests to interview Rams assistant G.M. John McKay and Seahawks assistant G.M. Nolan Teasley.
That brings the club’s number of known requests up to seven: McKay, Teasley, Vikings interim G.M. Rob Brzezinski, Bills assistant G.M. Terrance Gray, Titans assistant G.M. Dave Ziegler, 49ers assistant G.M. RJ Gillen, and Chargers assistant G.M. Chad Alexander.
McKay, in particular, could be one to watch for the position, as he worked alongside Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell with the Rams. McKay was Los Angeles’ director of pro personnel and O’Connell was the team’s offensive coordinator when the club won Super Bowl LVI to cap the 2021 season.
The Rams declined the fifth-year option on the contract of cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, according to the NFL’s personnel notice.
The move was expected, as exercising the option would have fully guaranteed Forbes $12.6 million in 2027.
The Commanders made Forbes the 16th overall pick in 2023, but he didn’t last two full seasons in Washington. The Commanders waived Forbes in December 2024, and the Rams claimed him off waivers.
Forbes, 25, started 14 games and played all 17 last season, seeing action on 814 defensive snaps and 82 on special teams. He totaled 45 tackles, three interceptions, 18 passes defensed and a forced fumble in 2025.
Forbes, though, did not start the final two postseason games, playing only a total of 29 defensive snaps against the Bears and Seahawks.
Forbes is one of five players drafted in the first round in 2023 to have his fifth-year option declined.
The Rams grabbed headlines by drafting Ty Simpson with the 13th overall pick and they’re adding another rookie quarterback to the roster.
Matthew Caldwell is on the list of 18 undrafted players who have agreed to terms with the Rams. Caldwell spent the 2025 season at Texas, but only attempted eight passes as a backup to Arch Manning. He started five games for Troy in 2024 and previously played at Gardner-Webb.
The Rams have also agreed to terms with North Carolina offensive lineman Austin Blaske, Houston running back Dean Connors, Vanderbilt offensive lineman Bryce Henderson, Arkansas tight end Rohan Jones, North Carolina offensive lineman Chad Lindberg, and Syracuse tight end Dan Villari on the offensive side of the ball.
Wake Forest safety Nick Andersen, Louisville linebacker Wesley Bailey, Wisconsin cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean, Fresno State cornerback Al’zillion Hamilton, Alabama linebacker Nikhai Hill-Green, Minnesota defensive lineman Jalen Logan-Redding, Tennessee defensive lineman Jaxson Moi, Missouri cornerback Drey Norwood, Wisconsin linebacker Darryl Peterson, Houston linebacker Eddie Walls, and Air Force defensive lineman Peyton Zdroik round out the undrafted additions.
It’s now obvious that the Rams have twisted themselves into an ever-changing Eldredge knot over the messaging associated with the stunning decision to use the 13th overall pick in the draft on quarterback Ty Simpson. And the overriding purpose of the fast-moving shell game has been the ongoing management of the relationship with the NFL’s reigning MVP — quarterback Matthew Stafford.
Now that the truth (we think) has come out, it’s fair to wonder how Stafford will react.
Yes, McVay has praised Stafford’s private response publicly. But what else would McVay say? Everything about this has been not about the truth but about selling a version of it that advances and protects the Rams’ interests.
And that’s OK. In football, teams mislead all the time. There are strategic reasons for doing so, because the truth can compromise the overriding strategies.
As to Stafford, there’s a to-date unknown truth regarding his true thoughts as to the decision to use the 13th overall pick in the draft (the same selection the Rams used in 2014 to select Aaron Donald) on someone who won’t do anything to help close the wafer-thin gap with the Seahawks for NFC West, NFC, and NFL supremacy. For the first time since 1967 (when the Packers used a first-round pick on quarterback Don Horn after Bart Starr was named league MVP), the current MVP has seen his potential replacement arrive with the first round of the next draft.
Stafford has said he’ll play this year. A contract has not yet been finalized. The terms (most importantly, the structure) will be key. Stafford, who’s on a year-to-year arrangement with the Rams, may want a true one-year deal, possibly with a no-tag clause for 2027.
Or maybe he’ll ask to be traded, now. (There aren’t many obvious destinations, but someone would surely scrap their current depth chart for him.) Or maybe he’ll decide, like Donald did two years ago, that Stafford has had enough.
He’s made $400 million. He doesn’t need to keep playing.
The Rams were close enough to another Super Bowl win to taste it. They used their bonus pick from the Falcons not on a game-ready player who will get the Rams over the top but on a guy who ideally won’t play in 2026, except in garbage time of blowout wins.
Here’s the point for now. The ever-moving goalposts suggest anxiety from the organization about Stafford’s potential reaction to banking that bonus pick. And now that Simpson has given up the ghost as to the extent to which McVay was involved in scouting him, it’s time to get some popcorn and wait for Stafford’s next move.
Whatever it will be.
After the Rams drafted quarterback Ty Simpson with the 13th pick last week, Simpson indicated that he’d never met with Rams head coach Sean McVay or General Manager Les Snead as part of the pre-draft process.
Simpson backtracked on that a few days later and Snead provided some more background on their interactions during a Tuesday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. Many prospects take visits to team facilities in the weeks leading up to the draft, but the Rams have historically avoided those and Snead said that is because the 30 visits allotted to each team become known to the entire league.
Snead said that can lead to missing out on desired targets thanks to other teams trading up and that the Rams prefer to go visit players because those meetings don’t need to be reported. Snead said that they made 66 such meetings in this year’s draft process and shared what they tell players about publicizing the interactions.
“We do like to emphasize ‘Hey, look, try to keep these private meetings between us,’” Snead said. “For that gamesmanship. We like for other teams not to know that we’re interested. We do emphasize that a little stronger.”
Snead said that Simpson took that to heart after meeting with both McVay and Snead and “stayed on script” longer than necessary in his first comments after being drafted. Snead also added that McVay would never be on board with drafting a quarterback that he’d never met, which helps clear up the path that led Simpson to the Rams to start his NFL career.
After he was drafted by the Rams, quarterback Ty Simpson said he had only a “brief” meeting with Rams scouts at the Alabama Pro Day workout. On Monday, Simpson amended that answer.
Via Sarah Barshop of ESPN, Simpson told Ian Fitzsimmons of ESPN Radio on Monday that he had a “secret meeting” with Rams coach Sean McVay before the draft.
“We tried to keep this under wraps as long as we could,” Simpson told Fitzsimmons. “It was something to where I knew they were interested, but they wanted to make it private and didn’t want people to know that they were interested.
“So, I had some secret meetings with Coach McVay, and I just was trying to be on script and do what everybody told me and not to tell anybody.”
Simpson later said he had one “secret meeting” with McVay, and they talked “for hours and hours” about football.
“I was told to not say anything,” Simpson said, “you know, because they didn’t want anybody to know.”
If word had gotten out that the Rams were looking seriously at Simpson, the Rams would have been vulnerable to someone trading up in front of them. And someone may have done it. The perception that McVay believed in Simpson (McVay’s post-selection demeanor notwithstanding) could have morphed into the reality of other teams deeming him to be more desirable.
So why would Simpson let the cat out of the bag now? For starters, it doesn’t matter — the Rams got him. At another level, however, Simpson is surely aware of the belief that McVay may not have been all in with the decision. This additional fact could dull the narrative that was created the moment McVay, while sitting next to G.M. Les Snead, crammed his hands into the pockets of his pants and seemingly sulked.
