Ty Simpson’s stock keeps climbing, and now one of the loudest pre-draft voices has him going in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. FOX Sports published Nick Wright’s first mock draft of the cycle, and the Alabama quarterback was one of the names drawing the most attention after weeks of rising buzz.
Wright said the team that takes Simpson will massively overdraft him, even as most mock drafts now have the Alabama quarterback landing on Day 1. That is the kind of split-screen that follows top prospects into draft season: one set of projections pushing a player up, another warning the market may have gone too far.
Wright’s board stretched well beyond Simpson. He projected the Jets would take a quarterback, saying he expects a crowded top 10 to feature plenty of Ohio State talent and calling one defender maybe the best in the class. He also said the board could push a running back high enough for him to question the fit before the line is built, a nod to the positional value debates that shape every mock this time of year.
The rest of Wright’s first-round read was built around team needs. He projected the Bengals to take the top tight end, the Chiefs to sprint to the podium for Rueben Bain if the board fell their way, the Dolphins to keep tearing down the roster, and the Cowboys to target Delane, whom he called the top corner in the draft. He said Dallas needs help in every part of the secondary.
That is the context behind a mock draft like this: it is not a forecast of what will happen, but a snapshot of where the conversation stands before the 2026 NFL Draft. Simpson’s rise is real enough to have him in the first-round conversation, but the disagreement over how high he should go shows how wide the gap still is between buzz and certainty.
Wright also pointed to the draft’s bigger positional fights, including quarterback, wide receiver, edge rusher, tackle and cornerback. The next stretch of pre-draft coverage will tell whether Simpson’s momentum holds or whether he becomes one of the names that forces teams to decide whether they trust the rise or the warning label attached to it.
