2026 NFL Draft: Ty Simpson has Round 1 traits but historic deep-ball struggles

Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson has made 10 career starts, all this season, helping the Crimson Tide to an 8–2 record and pushing himself firmly into the first-round conversation. He’s a souped-up Mac Jones — a better athlete with a bigger arm, and he’s been just as clinical in his processing and accuracy.

But there’s one part of his game that doesn’t fit: He’s been shockingly bad throwing deep balls (which, for our purposes, will refer to throws of 31-plus air yards).

I know we live in an age where every storyline can be spiced up with some social media-inspired hyperbole. 

This is not that.

And it matters because NFL teams aren’t just drafting tools, like arm strength and accuracy — they’re drafting what can be fixed and what can’t. So how does Simpson compare to his draft-eligible peers in the 2025 class?

Deep-ball accuracy: throws of 31+ air yards (through Week 12)

The table above, via TruMedia, shows that Mendoza, Jayden Maiava, Moore and Carson Beck have all been really good on deep throws, all completing at least 44 percent of them.

As you scroll, two names jump off the screen as you get to the bottom: Simpson and Nussmeier have been historically bad. Nussmeier has been a media darling for more than a year now, but given how the 2025 season has gone for him and LSU, he’s looked more like a priority free agent than franchise quarterback. 

Simpson’s place here was surprising enough that I double- and triple-checked my work. He’s been so good on those second-level throws — whether it’s throwing with anticipation, layering the ball over a linebacker or driving the ball into a tight window — that it’s easy to overlook a missed deep ball here or there. Turns out, they add up over 10 games. 

To put this in perspective, the difference between Simpson’s 20-to-30-yard completion percentage (60%) and his 0-to-19-yard percentage (63.6%) is only 3.6 percentage points. This is a remarkably small drop-off compared to Moore’s 12.6 percentage points (57.9% vs. 70.5%) and Mendoza’s 15.3 percentage points (57.1% vs. 72.4%).

Simpson’s elite accuracy on throws of 20 to 30 yards downfield makes his deep-ball struggles all the more confusing.

Accuracy on throws of 20 to 30 air yards

When you go back and look at all those downfield attempts, it’s clear that Simpson has the arm — he just lacks touch. Some attempts are overthrown. Others are underthrown. Ryan Williams hasn’t helped with a couple of drops, but it’s not enough to make you feel differently about the overarching theme: If not for Nussmeier, Simpson would be the least accurate deep-ball passer among the quarterbacks who have a chance to get drafted next spring.

Of that group, only he and Nussmeier have a negative EPA per dropback. (In its simplest form, EPA per dropback is the average number of points a quarterback creates [or loses] for his team every time he drops back.)

Simpson’s deep-ball struggles don’t align with the rest of his game, given everything else he does so well. It certainly feels like a flaw that can be corrected. But wishing it so won’t get you very far when you’re talking about investing a top-10 pick in a quarterback who hasn’t played a lot of football and appears to have a glaring weakness. 

How does Simpson compare historically to other first-round picks?

The picture gets even worse when you widen the lens to seven draft classes of first-round quarterbacks. Among 21 players, Simpson is dead last — by a large enough margin to make you worried.

Deep-ball accuracy: throws of 31+ air yards

(Table includes all first-round picks from 2019-2025 and Ty Simpson.)

(Note: Simpson’s EPA per dropback has improved slightly from -0.14 to -0.08. That’s because this includes the entirety of his college career, including 16 appearances from 2022-24 in mostly mop-up duty.)

At the very bottom of the table, Simpson is a full 14 percentage points behind the next closest name, Justin Herbert. Not great — and far below any reasonable threshold for a first-round prospect. When you look at throws of 20 to 30 air yards for these 20 first-rounders and Simpson, Simpson is No. 2 behind only Joe Burrow (67.4% completion percentage for Burrow in his final 14 college games compared with 61.8% for Simpson over his 26 career appearances). 

That’s better than C.J. Stroud (59.2%), better than Drake Maye (54.0%) — currently one of the best deep-ball passers on the planet — and better than every other first-rounder in the last seven drafts.

So what does this mean for Simpson’s draft decision?

There’s been a lot of talk about how this current quarterback class has gone from incredibly deep to ridiculously thin, and it’s happened in about a six-week span. Arch Manning, Cade Klubnik, Drew Allar, LaNorris Sellers, Nussmeier and Beck, to differing degrees, have been disappointments. That has paved the way for Simpson, Mendoza and Moore to jump to the front of the line, and all three are generally considered the three most likely first-rounders in this class. 

There have been rumblings that Moore, a one-year starter like Simpson, could return to Oregon. And Mendoza, who has been the most consistent of the bunch, still has a year of eligibility left if he chose to stay in college for another year. 

My knee-jerk reaction after seeing how poorly Simpson performed on deep throws was to conclude that he should return to school, play another full season, and spend the spring and summer working on that part of his game. 

But in reaching out to a league evaluator, they weren’t so quick to dismiss all the things Simpson does better than anyone in this draft class despite the deep-ball flaw in his game. How easy is it to correct this? Are the downfield misses a function of dropped passes, miscommunication, bad reads, shoddy footwork, or something more concerning? 

Quarterback-needy teams will have to answer all of these questions in the coming months. But this conversation got me thinking not only about those first-round quarterbacks drafted from 2019-25, but also those who went on Days 2 and 3 and have enjoyed some success as NFL starters. What did their deep-ball numbers look like, not only in their final year of college, but the one that preceded it? Was there improvement? And did that improvement carry over to the league?

That data could inform not only whether Simpson should declare for the draft in a few months, but what his game could look like a year from now if he chose to go back to Tuscaloosa for the 2026 season.

To understand whether Simpson’s deep-ball misfires are unusual — and whether he’s likely to fix it — you have to zoom out and look at how young quarterbacks typically develop. 

So I looked at 34 FBS quarterbacks from 2019-25 who became NFL starters or high-end backups and focused on one question: what were their deep-ball numbers before they broke out?

What you find is surprisingly consistent.

Across the sample, the average completion percentage on deep throws was 32.7%. In their next-to-last college seasons, two-thirds of quarterbacks fell between 29% and 48%. Just three dipped below 30%, and only four cleared 50%. In other words, most quarterbacks were clustered in the same place — inconsistent, but not awful, and very rarely elite.

The next question is more important: how much do quarterbacks improve with one additional season?

A lot, it turns out. Nineteen of the 37 quarterbacks improved their deep-ball accuracy in their final college season, and 14 jumped by at least 10 percentage points. Zach Wilson went from 32% to 72%. Jayden Daniels rose from 38% to 59%. 

There were regressions too. Seven quarterbacks saw their accuracy drop by at least 10 points in their final season, including Bo Nix, Sam Howell, Will Levis and Quinn Ewers. Only Nix went in Round 1 — and even then, many teams viewed him as more of a Day 2 prospect. Ewers bottomed out at 21.4% (down from 32% the season before), the worst of the group, and slid to the seventh round. The lesson: a second season can reveal trends in either direction, but most quarterbacks improve.

Put simply: deep-ball accuracy for young quarterbacks is not stable, and year-to-year swings are normal. Which brings us back to Simpson. His number today — 13.3% this season — is far below the historical floor. But history also shows how quickly that number can change with more reps, better footwork and a full offseason of preparation.

2026 NFL Draft quarterback primer: Age, eligibility and projections for Fernando Mendoza, Ty Simpson and more

Josh Edwards

Do historical trends suggest improvement?

To see how college deep-ball accuracy translates — or doesn’t — to the next level, here’s how each quarterback’s last two college seasons compared to the start of his NFL career.

(Note: In the table below, the left column is the quarterback’s completion percentage during his final two college seasons. The middle column is his completion percentage during the 2024 and 2025 NFL seasons [except for rookies* Cam Ward and Dillon Gabriel, who only have data for 2025]. And the right column is the difference between the quarterback’s NFL completion percentage in the middle column, and the league average completion percentage on throws of more than 31 air yards down the field, which is 28.2%.)

Perhaps most telling: Maye is a prime example of an inexperienced quarterback who got better over the course of his college career (and he was still exceedingly raw when he came out after the 2023 season). He completed 34% of his deep balls in his next-to-last season at UNC, improved to an impressive 48.6% in his final season, and now, a year-and-a-half into his NFL career, he’s one of the league’s best deep-ball passers, completing 38.5% of his deep balls, which is more than 10 percentage points above league average and nearly 12 percentage points better than his rookie number (26.7%).

Perhaps most curious: Jones was one of the best deep-ball passers during his final two seasons at Alabama. His last two NFL seasons? He’s one of the worst, completing just 10.5% of his throws, 17% below league average. 

You might say, “Well, he did have to play on a bad Jags team in 2024 and that probably affected the numbers.” And you’d be right, but in the wrong direction! He was 2 for 12 in Jacksonville, but is a hard-to-fathom 0 for 6 this season in San Francisco. 

When you watch those throws, you see one drop that hit the wide receiver in stride, and five other throws that raise questions about his arm strength, which was a recurring talking point during his pre-draft journey. But Jones was an elite processor and anticipatory passer at Alabama on the short and intermediate throws, and we’ve seen Kyle Shanahan put him in position to have similar success in place of Purdy during the first half of the 2025 season. 

Purdy is a relevant recent example, because his deep-ball college profile looked a lot like Simpson’s. The former Iowa State standout and 2022 Mr. Irrelevant had two of the lowest deep-ball completion percentages in his last two college seasons: 17.6% in 2018 and 23.5% in 2019. For all the good things Purdy has done in the NFL, one of his biggest weaknesses, at least in terms of the eyeball test, has been deep-ball consistency. 

But guess what? Over the past two seasons, Purdy has completed 56.3% of his deep passes (he’s a tidy 9 of 16 over that span). I went back and watched all 16 attempts, and it confirmed what Ran Carthon, the former Titans general manager who was in the 49ers front office when they drafted Purdy, told me: Shanahan does a great job scheming guys open, and that’s what you see: double-moves, rub routes and great individual efforts from his receivers. 

This leaves one big question: why is Simpson missing, and is the cause fixable?

It’s why Carthon, who is currently my co-host on the “With the First Pick” NFL Draft podcast, didn’t dismiss Simpson’s profile outright. To him, the issue is less about talent and more about diagnosis: why are the misses happening?

“Those are in-depth conversations that you’re going to have with your offensive coordinator, your quarterback coach in terms of okay, is this fixable,” Carthon said. “Conventional wisdom says yes, but then you want to start to dig deeper into the why. 

“Why is he not able to connect on it? You’re going to study the hell out of [his deep-ball] attempts to date. You’re going to try to have an understanding through your contacts at Alabama. 

“I remember when Trevor Lawrence came out and he was being lauded as the greatest quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck — some people said since John Elway — but then I just remember in my evaluation going back and watching multiple years of him against the Alabamas and LSUs, [teams that] had NFL caliber DBs and the throwing windows were tighter, you saw his completion percentage dip down to the 50% range when he had to make those tighter-window throws against NFL caliber DBs.

“And so I just remember making that point to myself, ‘Hey, this isn’t as clean as you think it is.’ Not to say that you wouldn’t have taken Trevor, but it was like, ‘Hey, let’s understand that this is an area of his game that’s that we’re going to have to have some conversations about. 

“That’s the point I’m bringing up with Ty Simpson and his (in)ability to hit the deep ball. It’s not due to a lack of arm strength. It could be the anticipatory part of the game. It could be just ball placement. It could be the receivers, the depth on their routes. It could be the line up front. It could be him not being able to hit that back foot, get the ball out versus him having to hit the back foot, push up in the pocket, move left or right, reset, then get the ball off. It could be all those things, but again, it just creates a deeper conversation.”

It’s reasonable to expect that in the NFL, the windows will get tighter and the completions will be harder to come by — especially the further downfield you throw the ball. And the numbers bear that out in the table above.

Either way, Carthon’s point is simple: you don’t judge the flaw until you understand its cause — and most causes are coachable.

The lesson, as always: fit matters. Whether it’s Maye, Jones, Purdy or Simpson. We can talk all we want about a franchise quarterback lifting everyone around them, despite the odds and obstacles. But unless you live in Buffalo, that’s more fairy tale than truth. The reality is that every quarterback has flaws, and if you’re not in the business of finding ways to maximize what they do well, you probably won’t be in business for long.

As for Simpson’s future … there’s no evidence his deep-ball issues have to be permanent. 

Recent history tells us, in fact, that young quarterbacks almost always improve their deep-ball accuracy with another season in college, and many of the quarterbacks now thriving in the NFL made their biggest strides by doing just that. 

If Simpson returns to Tuscaloosa, the odds favor meaningful growth — and a much different conversation a year from now.