{"id":72553,"date":"2026-04-24T00:59:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/nfl-draft-2026-mendoza-goes-no-1-as-rams-surprise-with-move-for-qb-ty-simpson-at-no-13\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T00:59:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:59:30","slug":"nfl-draft-2026-mendoza-goes-no-1-as-rams-surprise-with-move-for-qb-ty-simpson-at-no-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/nfl-draft-2026-mendoza-goes-no-1-as-rams-surprise-with-move-for-qb-ty-simpson-at-no-13\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL draft 2026: Mendoza goes No 1 as Rams surprise with move for QB Ty Simpson at No 13"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/live\/2026\/apr\/23\/nfl-draft-live-updates\">Pick-by-pick: all the selections from the first round<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Two quarterbacks go in Thursday\u2019s first round<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The story of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/live\/2026\/apr\/23\/nfl-draft-live-updates\">first round of the 2026 NFL draft<\/a> surrounded a quarterback but it wasn\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/apr\/22\/fernando-mendoza-nfl-draft-quarterback\">No 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As expected, the Las Vegas Raiders selected Mendoza with the first pick on Thursday after he led Indiana to the national title last season. But the shock of the night came when the Los Angeles Rams picked another quarterback, Alabama\u2019s Ty Simpson, at No 13. The Rams current starting quarterback, Matthew Stafford, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/feb\/05\/matthew-stafford-wins-nfl-mvp-and-vows-to-return-to-rams-next-season\">was named NFL MVP last season<\/a> and Simpson was projected to be a second-round pick by many analysts. However, Stafford turned 38 in February and the Rams are starting to plan for life without him, although head coach Sean McVay insisted the veteran will remain the starter for the time being. \u201cThis is Matthew\u2019s team,\u201d said McVay.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/apr\/24\/nfl-draft-2026-first-round-picks\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pick-by-pick: all the selections from the first round Two quarterbacks go in Thursday\u2019s first round The story of the first round of the 2026 NFL draft surrounded a quarterback but it wasn\u2019t No 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza. As expected, the Las Vegas Raiders selected Mendoza with the first pick on Thursday after he led &#8230; <a title=\"NFL draft 2026: Mendoza goes No 1 as Rams surprise with move for QB Ty Simpson at No 13\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/nfl-draft-2026-mendoza-goes-no-1-as-rams-surprise-with-move-for-qb-ty-simpson-at-no-13\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about NFL draft 2026: Mendoza goes No 1 as Rams surprise with move for QB Ty Simpson at No 13\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}