Why the Jets Must Pass on Ty Simpson

Rich laid out the case against the New York Jets drafting Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, and the logic walks through the front door and hits every note on the way.

His starting position is simple: unless the Jets are head over heels puppy love on Simpson and 100% assured he is great for the city, great for the team, and ready to survive his first year in New York, they should not take him.

The math starts with experience. Matt Miller surfaced a useful memory device on the show recently: the number Simpson wore in college is the number of starts he had, 15. Fifteen starts is below the threshold NFL teams typically want for a first-round investment. The Jets would either have to trade back into the first round to grab him, or wait and take a quarterback in the second round of a draft where they have already signaled to Dallas they are willing to trade a 2027 first-rounder to reinforce the roster around him.

That sequence puts Simpson in a roster that still has significant holes. Rich's view is the Jets are better off building up for 2027, winning as much as they can in 2026 with Geno Smith, and seeing whether Geno wins enough games that they can move on confidently.

The Arch Manning angle is live but fragile. If the Jets win too many games in 2026, they are not sniffing Arch at the top of the next draft. And if the Jets do land in range, the Manning family has a history of looking at Jets quarterback outcomes and quietly steering elsewhere. Rich's dry read on that: they have seen the history.

The alternative path Rich lit up is the one Daniel Jeremiah floated. If the Jets trade up for Carnell Tate, suddenly Tate, Garrett Wilson, and Breece Hall sit in the same offense, with a Bailey-level edge rusher rebuilding the defense and the first pick of the second night still in their back pocket. Let Simpson fall. Let the Cardinals or someone else who loves him make the call.

The closing beat is self-aware. Rich admitted the take could age like his don't-trade-for-Giannis take. But the gut stays the same. The Jets need more picks, more players, more foundation, not a 15-start quarterback walking into the deep end of New York City. If Rich is Ty Simpson, he would rather land somewhere else.