{"id":867743,"date":"2026-04-16T14:21:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867743\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T14:21:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:21:37","slug":"kiper-heard-no-on-steelers-drafting-ty-simpson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/867743\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiper ‘Heard No’ On Steelers Drafting Ty Simpson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear in the final days leading up to the 2026 NFL Draft. That said, Mel Kiper Jr. gave the latest on what he\u2019s hearing about the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 chances of drafting Ty Simpson in the first round.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Mike] McCarthy\u2019s in there. He has to love this guy at 21. I think like in the second, love in the first,\u201d Kiper said Thursday on ESPN\u2019s Unsportsmanlike<\/a> of what it would take for the Steelers to take a first-round quarterback. \u201cI\u2019ve heard no, we\u2019ll see. It\u2019s been pretty quiet on that front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiper isn\u2019t the only one hearing that. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\u2019s Gerry Dulac has said numerous times that Simpson isn\u2019t what the Steelers are looking for, and they\u2019d draft a QB this year no earlier than the third round<\/a>. And Todd McShay said he knows \u201cfor a fact\u201d the Steelers aren\u2019t going to draft Simpson.<\/p>\n

Also, Pittsburgh didn\u2019t have Simpson in for a pre-draft visit<\/a>, which is usually a strong indicator that he\u2019s off the table for a potential first-round selection by the team.<\/p>\n

The Steelers either don\u2019t have interest in Simpson in the first round, or they\u2019re laying a heck of a smokescreen to throw other teams off their trail. The latter is always possible this time of year, but it would require the Steelers to draft a first-round quarterback after having almost no pre-draft contact beyond a brief Combine meeting.<\/p>\n

You could excuse the lack of a pre-draft visit if there had been a Pro Day dinner, but Omar Khan and Mike McCarthy weren\u2019t even at Alabama for his workout. At that point, the process would feel extremely flawed if they drafted him.<\/p>\n

If Simpson somehow falls to No. 53, could they take a flyer on him? Sure, but all signs point to him being off the board by then. Stranger things have happened during the draft, but this doesn\u2019t feel like one of them. If Simpson ends up a Steeler, it\u2019ll be a genuine surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear in the final days leading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[12,7,1771,6,520,57,2360,426,20708,5207],"class_list":{"0":"post-867743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-espn","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mel-kiper-jr","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-pittsburgh","13":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","14":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","15":"tag-steelers","16":"tag-ty-simpson","17":"tag-unsportsmanlike"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116414833285029968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867743","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=867743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}