Last year it was Mel Kiper Jr. who put it all on the line to declare that Shedeur Sanders was an elite QB prospect and that anyone who dared disagree with him was wrong. This year, Dan Orlovsky is trying the same shtick with Alabama's Ty Simpson.
For weeks Orlovsky has been hyping Simpson to the moon, at times going so far as to argue that he should be receiving consideration at the No. 1 overall pick rather than Indiana's Fernando Mendoza. Ahead of tonight's NFL Draft, Orlovsky is once again pleading with NFL teams to consider taking Simpson.
"If he's not a first-round pick tonight, then we are evaluating, in the NFL, the quarterback position wrong," Orlovsky declared on Get Up this morning.
Fans Weigh In
In response to Orlovsky's comments, fans were pretty dismissive. Many pointed out that this is either a thinly-veiled effort by Orlovsky to make the pre-draft conversations more intense or just him having lost the plot.
"Well, you ‘experts’ have been evaluating them wrong. Look at all the busts at this position. You manufacture or talk yourselves into over inflating their value. Ty is a 1st round pick and Mendoza is overrated for overall #1," one user remarked.
"If he isn’t a first round pick then bro should never be put on espn to talk about who’s gonna get drafted lol he been riding this Ty Simpson first round pick wave allll pre draft," wrote another.
"I mean no QB in this draft should be a first round pick but Ty Simpson didn’t do one special thing at Bama. The bar for first round QBs has become shockingly low," a third wrote.
"Adamant here. Adamant there. When things turned out wrong, they just swept under the carpet and moved on to the next adamant."
"If he’s that good, why y'all ain’t speaking on him as a top ten pick? Let’s not act like y'all haven’t mocked worse QBs than him in the top ten."
© Kirby Lee-Imagn Images.
Simpson had a pretty solid year for Alabama in his lone season as a starter. He earned All-SEC honors after completing 64.5-percent of his passes for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns with just five interceptions and led the team all the way to the SEC Championship and the Rose Bowl. His passing yardage total was the fifth-highest in Alabama's storied history and his touchdown mark is tied for seventh.
But NFL fans and even many college fans were consistently underwhelmed by what they saw from Simpson and while many are willing to concede that he could play in the NFL, and probably is worthy of a pick on Day 2, there's not much momentum to shoot him up the draft boards.
