The Los Angeles Rams shocked the NFL world by drafting Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson with the 13th overall pick last Thursday for several reasons. Matthew Stafford is coming off an MVP season, and the Rams were a touchdown away from beating the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game back in January.
We can debate whether or not Simpson should have even been taken that high (he was the 38th-ranked prospect on Wide Left’s Consensus Big Board), but the Rams believe they have the coaching staff and infrastructure to maximize Simpson’s skillset and make him a capable replacement for Stafford in the future.
So while this pick may not help the Rams in the short-term, it could pay off down the road. They aren’t the first team to invest in a young quarterback with a capable veteran already on the roster.
The Minnesota Vikings drafted Daunte Culpepper with the 11th overall pick in 1999, even though they still had 35-year-old Randall Cunningham on the roster. Cunningham was coming off a superb season in which he received 14 of 47 MVP votes, helping lead the Vikings to a 15-1 record and to within a field goal of the NFC Championship.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell highlighted other instances in which teams drafted a quarterback in the first round despite having a capable veteran. Barnwell says that the 1999 Vikings may have had the most similar situation to this year’s Rams.
While Cunningham signed a five-year, $28 million contract after his big season, his tenure with the Vikings didn’t last much longer. Coach Dennis Green benched Cunningham midway through his sixth start of 1999 for George, who played out the rest of the season as Minnesota’s starter. Culpepper sat for his entire rookie season before taking over in 2000, when he led the league in touchdown passes and made the Pro Bowl.
Evaluating this one is complicated, and it’s the closest comparable situation to the one the Rams face with Stafford and Simpson. Stafford is much more entrenched as the Rams’ starter, of course, but the Vikings were even closer to a Super Bowl in 1998 than the Rams were last season. The Vikings landed their quarterback of the future, but the 1999 team didn’t get that boost from a first-round pick who could help the team immediately, and Minnesota fell from 15-1 to 10-6 and didn’t make it out of the divisional round. I’d argue it was a success, but others might think differently.
The Vikings actually had a second first-round pick that year. They took Michigan State defensive lineman Dimitrius Underwood, who infamously left training camp and never played a down for Minnesota. So they got no initial help from either of the first-round picks in 1999.
Fortunately for the Vikings, Culpepper had an incredible sophomore season in 2000, throwing for 3,937 yards and 33 touchdowns, leading the Vikings to an 11-5 record and an NFC Championship appearance. He would go on to make two more Pro Bowls in Minnesota before being traded to the Dolphins in 2006.
Could the Vikings have used more help initially in 1999? Sure, but they also weren’t counting on their other first-round pick to go MIA and never play for them. Although Culpepper’s tenure in Minnesota was cut short by an ACL tear in 2005, it’s hard to say their decision to draft him in 1999 was wrong.
Can the Rams find the same sort of success with Simpson in the future? That remains to be seen. But if L.A. once again gets to the doorstep of the Super Bowl and can’t capitalize again, they may come under fire for not doing more to maximize their current team with Stafford.
This article originally appeared on Vikings Wire: The Rams and Vikings have something in common with drafting QBs
About the Author
