Rams Risk Repeating History: Why Picking Ty Simpson Could Mirror the J.J. McCarthy Blunder

Nobody seems to care how wrong the media was then, or the thousands of hours that ESPN spent trying to convince us that Willis was a top-10 prospect despite his weak resume at Liberty. Similar to Simpson, much of Willis’s resume was built on analysts saying “look at the highlights, look at the cherry picked stats, and look at the combine.”

This is only supposed to fool fans but amazingly it seems even general managers and owners were fooled by pre-draft hype in 2024.

That entire draft season, Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy, and Bo Nix were widely viewed as second/third round prospects. There wasn’t even much of a movement to push a narrative because ESPN could be distracted by Caleb, Daniels, and Maye. Even so, when it came to draft night Penix went 8th, McCarthy went 10th, and Nix went 12th.

Just two years later, both Penix (Tua Tagovailoa) and McCarthy (Kyler Murray) are staring down the end of their careers with the franchises that drafted them because of the addition of veterans who are good enough to take the starting role next season. Minnesota went a step further by re-signing Carson Wentz on Thursday and seemingly giving up on McCarthy even faster than the New York Jets gave up on Zach Wilson.