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.
Rams Clips
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.
Before Thursday night, the Rams didn’t have a clear No. 2 quarterback behind Matthew Stafford. Now, at a minimum, they have a first-round rookie who’ll compete with 2023 fourth-rounder Stetson Bennett to be Matthew Stafford’s 2026 understudy.
On Friday night, a much happier Sean McVay was asked whether the selection of Ty Simpson closes the door on the possibility of bringing back 2025 backup Jimmy Garoppolo.
“I wouldn’t say that,” McVay said. “I don’t want to say completely closed, but I would say this. You guys know how much I appreciate Jimmy and what he could really do. I always viewed him as a starting-caliber quarterback. I wouldn’t say he’d ever close it, but by being able to do what we did last night, it probably lessens the level of urgency for that position. I certainly would never say never in anything like that.”
Before the draft began, McVay said he’s hoping that Garoppolo (who reportedly is considering retirement) has a “change of heart.” It’s unclear what the Rams would have done at No. 13 in round one if Garoppolo had re-signed. Since Simpson is a pick for the future, they may have taken him anyway — with Simpson taking Bennett’s place at No. 3 on the depth chart.
Rams coach Sean McVay says quarterback Matthew Stafford reacted just the way the Rams hoped he would by the team spending its first-round pick on his heir apparent, Ty Simpson.
McVay said on ESPN that Stafford has been a consummate professional and will be supportive of Simpson.
“He couldn’t be more of a stud,” McVay said. “When you’re an elite competitor the way he is, he responded exactly the way I would want to. He’s going to put his arm around this guy. . . . He’s like, ‘I understand it.’ He’s earned the right to be year to year, and if he tells me he wants to play three more years, no one would be more excited about that than me.”
McVay said having Simpson on the team will make it easier to give Stafford some time off in practice, something that a player Stafford’s age can benefit from.
“Going into Year 18, you manage his workload,” McVay said.
Stafford is heading into the final year of his contract and has considered retirement, and Simpson was picked to be ready whenever Stafford walks away. But McVay wants Stafford to know that he’ll walk away of his own volition, and that the Simpson pick wasn’t about pushing Stafford out.
At a time when too many people in positions of prominence want us to not believe our lyin’ eyes, Rams coach Sean McVay admits that, on Thursday night, what we got was what we saw.
In comments to reporters after the second day of the 2026 draft, McVay acknowledged that he was “grumpy” the night before, following the selection of quarterback Ty Simpson with the 13th overall pick in round one.
McVay had some fun with the situation from the outset of his comments.
“What do you guys think?” McVay said, in a joint press conference with G.M. Les Snead. “Am I angry right now? I will say this, though, the one thing that would never be doubted is we couldn’t be any more lockstep in every decision that we make. I get my demeanor last night, but we’re excited about it. There are different things. I always want to be mindful of how things come off and things like that. I’m very excited about last night and very excited about today. We couldn’t be more excited about us continuing to lead together, but every decision that we make is collective and collaborative. For any of the questions or misunderstandings just based on my demeanor or disposition last night, I did want to get that out of the way. This is my buddy right here. That was brought to my attention because I got so many texts. That was never my intended way to be able to come off, but sometimes I can be a little grumpy.”
Which raised an obvious question. Why was he grumpy?
“Well, there were other things that had nothing to do with that, which that’s normal life,” McVay said. “The main thing was . . . I couldn’t be more excited about being able to add him, but also understanding how much I love Matthew Stafford, how respectful you want to always be and to the way things can be interpreted. The demeanor would’ve been stoic by nature because you are excited, but by no means — it is Matthew’s football team.
“I’m excited to be able to add Ty. What a blessing it is for him to be able to learn from Matthew and to be able to come into this atmosphere and environment. Whenever that time comes for him to get an opportunity to be Matthew’s successor will be on Matthew’s terms. I think that’s really what the important thing was. I didn’t want that to ever be misunderstood while not minimizing the excitement for Ty and the buy-in. Les and his group really liked him. As soon as we started really studying him, there was a body of work, like I talked about, that was a good, fun evaluation. A lot of the concepts that we would activate. The guy is a football junkie and plays with the timing and rhythm. You can see that he’s a coach’s son. His journey is a fun one that he’s been through.”
As we discussed McVay’s way on Thursday night on Friday’s PFT Live, we eventually got around to the idea that McVay calibrated his demeanor as a message to Stafford that he’s not being replaced or even nudged. The notion that the reigning MVP would have his successor taken in the first round of the next draft — with a pick only three spots out of the top 10 — is borderline laughable. It puts the move in the category of Cousins-Penix and Rodgers-Love.
For the Falcons, the shocking move resulted in Kirk Cousins being benched for Michael Penix Jr. during his rookie season. For the Packers, Love sat for three years. And Rodgers won the MVP award in both of Love’s first two seasons on the bench.
McVay wants everyone to know the Rams remain Stafford’s team for as long as Stafford wants that to be the case. While the organization must plan for a future without Stafford, McVay wants everyone to know Simpson is an insurance policy, not a starter-in-waiting who possibly won’t be waiting very long to start.
And if McVay was going to err on one side or the other, he opted to err on the side of sending a signal that would seem to be an indictment of Simpson in order to ensure that Stafford wouldn’t get the impression that the clock is now ticking on the Rams deciding that it’s time to close the door on him.
The Rams famously used plenty of multi-tight end sets during the 2025 season.
Now they have another player who could make an impact among that group.
Los Angeles selected Max Klare out of Ohio State at No. 61 overall in the second round of the 2026 draft.
Klare spent his first three collegiate seasons at Purdue before transferring to Ohio State for 2025. He caught 51 passes for 685 yards with four touchdowns in 2024. He was a first-team All-Big Ten honoree in 2025, though he caught 43 passes for 448 yards with two TDs.
In his 32 collegiate games, he caught a total of 116 passes for 1,329 yards with six TDs.
He is the second offensive pick for the Rams in 2026 after the club selected quarterback Ty Simpson at No. 13 overall on Thursday night.
Whether it’s a Kirk Cousins/Michael Penix Jr. situation or an Aaron Rodgers/Jordan Love situation, the Rams have a situation regarding their current and future quarterbacks.
And the current starter could be playing beyond the upcoming season.
Via Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, the Rams and Stafford are “deep in discussions” covering 2026 and beyond. The Rams believe there’s a “real chance” Stafford will play beyond the 2026 season.
On one hand, it’s obvious that there’s a “real chance” 2026 won’t be Stafford’s final season; there had been no prior indication that 2026 would be Stafford’s last year. But the presence of Ty Simpson makes the question more relevant. And the circumstances more awkward.
Simpson hasn’t played a lot of college football. That was one of the knocks on him. “Limited sample size.” And the sample size won’t grow much, if things go as planned in 2026.
That’s the source of the consternation as to the decision to draft Simpson. The best-case scenario for the Rams means Simpson gets no regular-season experience — unless the Rams are blowing teams out to the point at which the Rams empty the bench.
However it goes, the Rams have the reigning MVP. For perhaps the first time in NFL history, the team with the reigning MVP drafted his eventual replacement in round one. In lieu of getting someone who could help the Rams get past the Seahawks and get to the Super Bowl, they opted to make a pick for the future.
And, at this point, the future could be 2028. Or maybe even 2029.
It’s been a tumultuous offseason for Rams receiver Puka Nacua.
But after seeking some professional help, Nacua has been involved in Los Angeles’ offseason program. In a radio interview with ESPN Los Angeles on Friday, G.M. Les Snead provided a positive update on the young wideout.
“You know what, Puka’s doing really, really well. It’s really, really cool to see,” Snead said. “We’re in a profession where, hey, young men are probably … people that are carrying the most responsibility, right? They’re players on the field and they have the most responsibility for an organization. So, where a lot places, the people in your organization who are carrying the weight-bearing load are often older, more experienced, a little wiser. So, the neat thing in this business is to be there when someone does have a hiccup, someone does stumble, and to go, you know what, been there, done that, we can get off the mat, we can apply some lessons, we can get better and see them become. I always say, they’re young men becoming men. And I’m 55 years old and I’m still becoming. And I’m not sure I’ll ever get there, but we’re always striving to do it.
“I’d say, one of the more fulfilling things about being in sports, is dealing with a subset of people that are still getting there. … But to see people like Puka grow, it’s a fulfilling — it’s one of the reasons, if not the main reason, you do it. It’s definitely one of the reasons that makes this more fulfilling than anything.”
Nacua, who turns 25 at the end of May, led the league with 129 catches and 107.2 yards per game in 2025. Now that he’s through the third year of his rookie deal, he is extension eligible and it stands to reason that Los Angeles would like to get him signed to a second contract in the next couple of months.
