{"id":857475,"date":"2026-04-06T19:57:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T19:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/857475\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T19:57:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T19:57:39","slug":"todd-mcshay-thinks-qb-prospect-linked-to-steelers-is-most-underrated-player-in-entire-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/857475\/","title":{"rendered":"Todd McShay Thinks QB Prospect Linked To Steelers Is ‘Most Underrated Player In Entire Draft’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Steelers have done their homework on North Dakota State QB Cole Payton. The team attended his Pro Day and also hosted him for a pre-draft visit, and with a chance the Steelers take a quarterback in the 2026 NFL Draft, Payton is a name to know. He has one big supporter in NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay, who went on The Rich Eisen Show today and gave Payton a lot of praise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cCole Payton is the most underrated prospect in the entire draft. I think he\u2019s a Day 2 pick and he\u2019s going to surprise some people coming out of North Dakota State,\u201d McShay said.<\/p>\n

Payton is athletic with a big arm, but there are concerns about his accuracy and his mechanics. He\u2019s an intriguing flier for a team to take, but it\u2019s interesting to hear McShay call Payton a Day 2 pick. That would put him in the same tier as players such as Penn State\u2019s Drew Allar and LSU\u2019s Garrett Nussmeier, and there could be a run on quarterbacks in Day 2.<\/p>\n

In our scouting report<\/a>, Alex Kozora gave Payton a Day 3 grade and compared him to Tim Tebow. Payton can use his legs well, but he needs to improve as a thrower to become an NFL starter, but McShay seems to see the upside with Payton. The Steelers are obviously intrigued too, given the legwork they\u2019ve done on him pre-draft. He\u2019s been a popular mock draft selection to the Steelers, although usually later than Day 2. It\u2019ll be interesting to see if Pittsburgh values him as a Day 2 prospect with other needs the team could look to address earlier in the draft.<\/p>\n

The discussion about Payton stemmed from McShay making it clear he values Alabama QB Ty Simpson as a tier above the Payton\/Nussmeier\/Allar group and believes Simpson should be a first-round pick. While the Steelers haven\u2019t shown much interest in him pre-draft, he\u2019s another potential option for them if they want to address quarterback early in the draft. But the legwork they\u2019ve done on Payton makes him a more obvious candidate to be selected, and if the team feels Mike McCarthy can develop him, it could be a great pick.<\/p>\n

There are definitely more questions than answers right now with Payton, though there\u2019s certainly a high ceiling if he can figure everything out. With McCarthy\u2019s experience working with young quarterbacks, it could be a flier well worth taking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers have done their homework on North Dakota State QB Cole Payton. The team attended his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[75157,7,6751,20202,2673,691],"class_list":{"0":"post-857475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-cole-payton","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-north-dakota-state","11":"tag-the-rich-eisen-show","12":"tag-todd-mcshay","13":"tag-trending"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116359536672849226","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}