What Impresses and Worries Kurt Warner about Alabama QB Ty Simpson

Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner laid out the case for and against Alabama's Ty Simpson on The Rich Eisen Show, walking through why the tape excites him, why the body type worries him, and why the team that drafts Simpson matters more than the slot.

Warner has Simpson as QB2 on his board, and the reasoning starts with the throws. "I think there's times that his tape is better than Fernando Mendoza, just in terms of seeing the high-level throws, seeing what we call NFL throws, NFL type offense where you have to read plays a certain way," Warner said. He went a step further on Simpson's fit in the systems quietly running the modern league. "I believe Ty Simpson is the best quarterback in this draft in terms of his movement skills, his ability to run the naked bootlegs, and buy time out and space and make those plays."

The concerns are real and Warner did not soften them. Fifteen career starts is a thin sample to draw a franchise read from. "I think you always need two or three years, I would say three years, to really know who a player is. So to have 15 games, it's like, especially the up-and-down of those 15 games, who is he really? What can we expect from him? Because we've seen high moments, no doubt, but can we expect that? We've seen some low. Do we expect that?"

Then there is the frame. Warner relayed what he has heard from people who have stood next to Simpson in person. "I've talked to a lot of people that said, you know, when they're up close to him, that the physical stature worries them. There's some guys that can be smaller from a height standpoint, but they just have something to the body, some thickness to them that they believe the wear and tear. Guys like Baker Mayfield and Russell Wilson that are built a little bit different even though they're smaller guys. Brock Purdy weighs in the 220s. With Ty Simpson, they feel that he's very slight from a physical standpoint."

Rich pressed on the Arizona scenario, where Kliff Kingsbury's successor Drew Petzing runs a McVay-tree offense and Jacoby Brissett and Gardner Minshew sit ahead of any incoming rookie on paper. Warner sees the schematic fit and flags the timeline. "I definitely think it's a fit. I'm not sure there's a lot of systems that I say, oh, he can't play in that system. But you talk about the Cardinals, right now they have Jacoby Brissett, Gardner Minshew, two technically backup guys. So my concern there would be, does he have to be thrust in a little bit faster, and is he ready for that?"

Warner pointed to softer landings, the Jets with Geno Smith already in place, the Vikings with Kirk Cousins in front of Mendoza, the Rams with Stafford. "Where you get picked, what the situation is with the team that picks him, I think is really, really important."