One preseason game won’t tell you everything about a rookie quarterback. But sometimes, it gives you a pretty good idea of what a team saw before anyone else did.

Ty Simpson isn't suddenly ready to replace Matthew Stafford after the Rams’ 20-12 preseason win over the Chiefs. He was playing against backups, working within a very friendly game plan, and was rarely asked to make the kind of difficult, off-schedule throws that can expose a young quarterback in a hurry.

So no, this wasn’t proof that the Rams made the right call by taking him No. 13 overall. It didn’t erase the questions about his limited experience, smaller frame, or uneven finish to his only season as Alabama’s starter, either.

But Simpson still gave Los Angeles plenty to like.

He completed 21 of 25 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns without turning the ball over. More importantly, he looked calmer and more comfortable as the game went on. His accuracy held up when the windows got tighter. His feet stayed connected to what he was seeing. When a play broke down, he didn’t panic or turn a bad situation into a disaster.

For most of the afternoon, Simpson played the exact kind of clean, controlled football the Rams wanted from him.

Then, in the fourth quarter, Los Angeles gave him a little more responsibility.

That’s when Simpson offered his first real glimpse of why the Rams were willing to draft Matthew Stafford’s eventual successor before they actually needed one.

The Easy Stuff Was Supposed To Look Easy

Los Angeles wasn’t about to drop Simpson into Arrowhead Stadium and ask him to run the entire Sean McVay offense on his first night.

That would’ve been a little much.

Simpson came into training camp trying to absorb a system he compared to “drinking from a fire hydrant.” The quarterback has to handle the formations, motions, and pre-snap adjustments that keep the whole offense moving. Offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase called those details the foundation of everything the Rams do.

And Simpson hadn’t exactly been getting the workload you’d expect from a first-round quarterback. When Stafford practiced, he ran the first-team offense while Stetson Bennett handled most, if not all, of the second-team work. Simpson got second-team reps on Stafford’s scheduled rest days, but there were stretches of camp when he was only seeing a few competitive drives in practice.

Even his best early camp performances came with a few rookie moments attached. He showed a quicker release and fired an intermediate throw to Max Klare with plenty of juice, but defenders also dropped a couple of passes that could’ve turned into interceptions. McVay was still helping him clean up the basics: calling plays clearly in the huddle, getting the ball out faster, and syncing his lower body with the timing of the routes.

So there was no reason to make his first NFL appearance harder than it needed to be.

The Rams opened with a lot of play action and defined reads. Three straight bootlegs on Simpson’s second series picked up 39 yards. Moving the pocket gave him cleaner pictures, cut the field in half, and kept him from having to sit in the pocket behind a third-string offensive line for too long.

Simpson did what he was supposed to do.

That might sound like faint praise, but rookie quarterbacks mess up the easy stuff all the time. They rush the fake, drift too far on the rollout, lose their base, or hesitate just long enough for an open receiver to disappear. Simpson’s feet looked comfortable and his passes showed up where they needed to.

The accuracy and willingness to throw into tighter windows were the first things that stood out when I watched the game back. Even though the Rams built the afternoon around shorter throws, Simpson wasn’t just tossing safe passes toward wide-open receivers. He consistently put the ball in a spot where his guys could catch it without breaking stride or taking an unnecessary hit.

His first mistake ended up being encouraging, too.

Simpson bobbled a high snap on his opening possession, and the rush was already on him by the time he got control of the ball. A young quarterback trying to force something could’ve drifted backward, thrown into trouble or taken a sack that killed the drive.

Simpson got away, recognized the play was over, and threw the ball out of bounds.

It wasn’t exciting. It was the right decision.

The same thing showed up when he had to leave the structure of the play. He didn’t look panicked when the pocket shifted. Escaping and throwing on the run looked natural. He wasn’t turning broken plays into miracles, but he also wasn’t letting the defense decide what happened next.

That kind of restraint has always been part of the appeal. Simpson threw only five interceptions on 523 attempts at Alabama, setting the program record for the lowest career interception percentage. In his one season as the starter, he completed 64.5% of his passes for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns while leading Alabama to 11 wins and the College Football Playoff.

The Rams saw more than a quarterback who simply avoided mistakes. Simpson tied for the FBS lead with 30 big-time throws, according to Pro Football Focus, and produced 1,095 yards on passes traveling between 10 and 19 yards downfield. That intermediate area is a big part of what McVay wants to do offensively.

It was also where Simpson looked most comfortable in Kansas City.

He completed all six of his intermediate attempts for 108 yards, and every one of them moved the chains. Nine of his 25 passes went over the middle, with eight completions for 78 yards and two touchdowns.

He didn’t attempt a throw that traveled more than 20 yards through the air, and his average depth of target was only 5.3 yards. The Rams clearly weren’t trying to find out how much of the playbook Simpson could handle in one afternoon.

They wanted him to get comfortable first. Once he got there, they started asking him some harder questions.

Then Los Angeles Took The Training Wheels Off

The most useful part of Simpson’s debut lasted eight plays.

Kansas City punted with 9:56 left, giving the Rams the ball at their own 13-yard line with a 13-9 lead. This was the spot where Los Angeles could’ve played it safe, handed the ball off a few times, and tried to get out of there with a preseason win nobody would remember by the end of the week.

Instead, Nate Scheelhaase let Simpson keep throwing.

A defensive holding penalty wiped out the first play. Simpson then missed CJ Daniels to the right before settling in. He hit Mark Redman for 22 yards, found Dean Connors for 13 more, and connected with Brennan Presley for 23. He came back to Daniels over the middle for 16, then found Presley again for six.

Five straight completions moved the Rams 74 yards and had them knocking on the door.

This wasn’t the same easy menu of rollouts and half-field reads that helped Simpson get comfortable earlier in the game. Los Angeles lined him up in the shotgun and asked him to stay in the pocket. He had to see the coverage, work through the concept and get the ball out without the play design handing him an obvious answer.

That’s where he started to look like a quarterback who can really last in this league.

The 22-yard throw to Redman came after Simpson had to reset when his first read wasn’t there. He found the open space and got the ball there before the coverage could close. The 23-yarder to Presley came from a clean platform and had enough zip to beat the defensive back across the field.

It was a good stretch of quarterback play. Nothing flashy. Just one accurate, on-time throw after another.

That matters because the question with Simpson was never whether he could look like an NFL quarterback when everything was clean. His college tape had plenty of those moments. He had polished footwork, understood how to attack zone coverage, and was trusted at Alabama to set protections before the snap.

The problems showed up when pressure sped everything up.

Simpson completed only 57% of his passes over his final four college games. His base got less reliable when the pocket got messy, his ball placement slipped, and he held the ball too long and took sacks he probably should’ve avoided. Injuries also started piling up. He dealt with elbow bursitis and a lower-back issue before a cracked rib ended his Rose Bowl appearance against Indiana.

One preseason drive didn’t erase any of that.

It did show the version of Simpson the Rams believe they can build around.

On the final play of the possession, Simpson moved the coverage with his eyes before coming back to Connors on an angle route for a two-yard touchdown. It was a simple throw, but it worked because Simpson understood where the opening would be and got the defender to look somewhere else first.

That’s quarterbacking.

McVay said Simpson “read the plays out” and “praised his command of the offense. Those are the same traits the Rams talked about after drafting him.

The early bootlegs showed that Simpson could fit into the Rams’ offense.

The 87-yard touchdown drive showed why they think he might eventually be able to run it.

Los Angeles Can’t Let One Night Change The Plan

The Rams’ decision looked strange in April because they didn’t look like a team desperate for a quarterback.

Stafford had just won his first MVP after leading the NFL with 4,707 passing yards and 46 touchdowns to just eight interceptions. Los Angeles went 12-5 and reached the NFC Championship Game, where Stafford threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns in a four-point loss to Seattle.

He announced his return while accepting the award and later signed a one-year, $55 million extension. Then the Rams spent the offseason making an already-loaded roster even better. They traded for two-time All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie and added reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett after his record-setting 23-sack season.

They’re not rebuilding. They’re trying to win the Super Bowl right now.

That made No. 13 feel like a pretty expensive place to draft a quarterback they hoped wouldn’t have to play anytime soon.

The Rams could’ve taken an offensive tackle or another receiver. They could’ve traded down and picked up more assets. They had their highest draft pick in a decade because of the 2025 deal that sent No. 26 and a third-round pick to Atlanta — not because their own season had fallen apart.

Instead, they took a quarterback who had started only 15 college games.

This wasn’t some panic pick after the draft board went sideways. Los Angeles had been working toward Simpson for months.

General manager Les Snead reportedly told Simpson’s family before the Rose Bowl that his floor would be the first round. The Rams hosted his parents while Alabama was in Los Angeles for the playoff, and Simpson later said he had secret meetings with McVay that lasted “hours and hours.” The Rams kept their interest quiet because they were worried another team might jump ahead of them.

McVay liked how much of Ryan Grubb’s Alabama offense carried over to what the Rams wanted to do. The play-action concepts, drop-back reads, and movement throws all looked familiar. Director of scouting Nicole Blake called Simpson’s intelligence rare for a quarterback with only one year of starting experience. McVay called him a “football junkie” who played with timing and rhythm.

Four months later, you could see why they liked him.

The biggest reason to draft Simpson early was time. Stafford's 38 and taking his career one season at a time. The Rams knew that waiting until he retired would mean joining every other team in the yearly scramble for anyone who might be able to play quarterback.

They had a prospect they believed fit their offense, a coaching staff they trusted to develop him, and a veteran quarterback who gave them the luxury of not rushing the process.

Snead called addressing the position before it became a glaring need a “net positive.” Simpson coming to town also gave the Rams enough confidence in their future to keep trading away draft capital while they built the current roster.

Now they have to be careful not to waste that advantage.

A strong preseason debut shouldn’t turn Simpson into an immediate threat to Stafford or create pressure to speed up the succession plan. Bennett entered the opener ahead of him in the backup competition, and McVay said the Rams would keep evaluating the position instead of letting one good performance completely change the order.

That’s the right approach.

Simpson still needs more experience against real pressure. He needs to show that his mechanics won’t fall apart when NFL starters collapse the pocket. He needs to hit the vertical throws Los Angeles didn’t ask him to attempt in Kansas City. And his durability concerns aren’t going away after 39 preseason snaps against the bottom of another team’s roster.

That doesn’t make the good stuff meaningless.

Simpson completed 20 of 22 passes from a clean pocket for 185 yards and two touchdowns. He finished with a 91.3% adjusted completion rate and didn’t produce a turnover-worthy play. When the Rams opened things up late, he didn’t just hang on. He led an 87-yard drive and finished it by moving a defender with his eyes.

That’s about as much as Los Angeles could’ve asked for in his first game.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

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