Chris Simms’ NFL Draft QB Rankings Aren’t All That Crazy This Year

The time has come. On Wednesday, NBC Sports’ Chris Simms dropped his annual NFL draft quarterback rankings. This is a date NFL draft nerds either look forward to or dread because Simms’ rankings are always controversial. He’s usually in line with general consensus on the top prospects but there is always at least one extremely hot take that goes against what basically everybody in draft circles thinks. And sometimes he’s right!

Last year he had C.J. Stroud as the top prospect in the draft over Bryce Young. That wasn’t exactly a scalding take but it was far from an agreed-upon opinion and ended up aging very well. In those same rankings, though, Simms had Hendon Hooker as a better prospect over Anthony Richardson. The jury is technically still out on that as Hooker didn’t play a snap while recovering from a torn ACL. But Simms clearly did not buy the hype on Richardson and he ended up playing well as a rookie.

Such is the life of a take artist. But Simms catches extra heat because he is ostensibly not a Stephen A. Smith type whose primary goal is to get a rise out of viewers by taking an outrageous stance. When he leans into it, though, he can fire off some scalding takes. In 2021 he had Zach Wilson above Trevor Lawrence. In 2018, perhaps the most famous example of Simms successfully calling his shot, he had Josh Allen as the top quarterback on his board. That wasn’t a common take, as Allen was a complete wild card out of Wyoming and was in the same draft as Heisman Trophy-winner Baker Mayfield.

So, what did Simms have in store for this year? He ranked Drake Maye as the sixth-best quarterback prospect in the draft.

And… that isn’t all that crazy, is it? I mean, sure, it’s a stab at a hot take. All season Maye was seen as the best quarterback prospect other than Caleb Williams and a sure-fire pick at No. 2 overall. Once the season ended and Jayden Daniels won the Heisman Trophy, NFL draft pundits started including him in the Maye tier right behind Williams. To boot Maye down to six, behind prospects with fairly serious flaws (Bo Nix is 24 years old, Michael Penix Jr. has had multiple knee surgeries, J.J. McCarthy barely threw the ball) is certainly audacious.

Maye’s stock has been taking hit after hit for more than a week now. The NFL combine is a good measuring ground for how the draft community feels about certain prospects and nobody’s stock has taken a worse turn post-combine than Maye. There isn’t one thing about him that was revealed at the combine that has resulted in this turn. There just seems to be a growing consensus that Maye has great talent but maybe doesn’t have the other qualities required to put it together. That’s basically what Simms says here.

There’s a certain shock to seeing Maye below the McCarthy/Nix/Penix trio but calling him a “talented project” is actually right on the nose from what we are hearing right now.

We’ll have to wait till next year to get really worked up about a Simms quarterback ranking, because this year’s take is pretty lukewarm.