The decision to draft Ty Simpson with the 13th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft continues to become more and more costly for the Los Angeles Rams.
The Rams have given Matthew Stafford a massive raise, reportedly giving him a one-year extension worth $55 million (up to $60 million), pushing his overall contract numbers from 2026-27 to two years, $105 million.
Although Stafford has earned the financial reward for his play on the field, the timing of this extension feels like the Rams are having to pay up after surprisingly selecting a quarterback with the 13th overall pick, especially given the fact that they are in a championship window right now.
The Rams have been rumored to be interested in taking quarterbacks over the past couple of years, but this year they decided to actually do it, and you could tell in the immediate aftermath that the decision did not sit well with Sean McVay. We all saw McVay's reaction to the pick, so you can only imagine how the reigning NFL MVP felt behind closed doors.
Matthew Stafford's latest raise from the Rams feels like a truce after Ty Simpson draft pick
The Rams had a chance to go after a playmaker with that 13th overall pick, and the assumption after the NFL Draft was that those were the debates they were having behind closed doors:
Do we take a quarterback here or do we add another weapon for Stafford?
You can't fault NFL teams from keeping one eye on the future, but there are consequences of that. When you have a roster that is ready to contend for a championship, and you might still be one additional piece away from getting to the mountaintop, it's difficult to justify the 3-year developmental plan at the quarterback position.
If the Rams can win a Super Bowl this coming season, nobody's really going to care, but if they fall short? What do you think will be the first thing everyone's going to point out?
Should have taken Makai Lemon... Should have taken Kenyon Sadiq...
The Rams addressed their biggest need defensively by trading their other 1st-round pick for cornerback Trent McDuffie. That trade had everyone thinking that Les Snead was in "F*** Them Picks" mode, but he took that a completely different direction with the Simpson pick.
Taking Simpson with the 13th overall selection wasn' F*** Them Picks in the sense that the Rams were taking an all-in, aggressive approach to their immediate future, but it felt like an F*** Them Picks in th sense that they simply threw premium NFL Draft real estate to the wind when it could have been spent on helping this team.
And when you think of it that way, the timing of Matthew Stafford getting a bunch of extra zeroes in his bank account makes even more sense.
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