The 4 NFL teams better off waiting on a quarterback until the 2027 draft

The 2026 NFL Draft is, uh, not the draft for you if you’re a team in need of a long-term answer at quarterback. Sure, one specific team is going to get lucky by drafting Fernando Mendoza, but if you aren’t the Las Vegas Raiders, you’re better off waiting until next year.

Sure, one of the four teams below will almost certainly take a flyer on Ty Simpson either late in the first or early in the second round, which isn’t the worst decision in the world, but I’d argue all of these teams would be better off just passing on the position — outside of potentially adding a project on Day 3 — and waiting for a much stronger 2027 class, which may feature Arch Manning, Dante Moore, Julian Sayin, LaNorris Sellers, Sam Leavitt and Trinidad Chambliss.

New York Jets

The New York Jets would have loved the chance to draft Oregon quarterback Dante Moore here. Even if picking Moore this high would have been risky, it would at least have been understandable, you know?

But Moore chose to return to Oregon for another season, and the Jets have hopefully chosen to be bad for another year so they have a shot at one of the top 2027 quarterbacks — and hey, maybe that could even just end up being Moore, delaying New York’s hopes by a year.

With Moore not an option, the Jets traded for Geno Smith, who went 2-13 as the Raiders’ quarterback last season. Smith’s a great option for the Jets, because his 2026 outcome will likely be only at one of the extremes — either he’s the tank commander that leads the Jets to a top-three pick, or he somehow bounces back to his Seahawks form and the Jets make a run at a playoff sp….okay, nevermind, that’s a little too extreme of a thought. But yeah, the Jets will likely be bad this year, so they can easily add a better quarterback if they wait a year.

Arizona Cardinals

With the Kyler Murray era over, the Arizona Cardinals have a clear need at quarterback. We thought they’d just roll with Jacoby Brissett this season, but Brissett is absent from the team’s offseason program as he tries to, IDK, play hardball for a new contract despite going 1-11 as a starter last season. That could push Arizona to seek out a quarterback in this class, especially if Ty Simpson falls to the second round.

They should not do that, though. If they decide to draw a line in the sand with Brissett, they can just start Gardner Minshew next season. It’s not like either guy is expected to win many games on a roster with this many holes.

The smart move here is to wait on 2027. Maybe Arizona decides it can’t pass up on Simpson if he’s there, but I just think this team is going to be a disaster in 2026 regardless of who is quarterback, so why start the countdown clock toward a future decision about a rookie extension now when you can push that back a year and get a much better prospect in 2027?

Cleveland Browns

The Cleveland Browns have flirted with the idea of playing Deshaun Watson this season. If they do, it would signal an official waving of the white flag on Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel, and unless Watson magically bounces back to his pre-suspension form, it would also put the Browns in line for an early pick in 2027.

Here’s the thing with Watson: he’s been bad in his stint with the Browns, especially compared to his numbers in Houston.

I also firmly believe Watson’s off-field issues should disqualify him from even being on an NFL roster at this point, but alas, that’s not the reality we live in. The one we exist in is one where the Browns have almost 15 percent of their salary cap tied up by the final season of Watson’s deal, and so I can see why the team would be willing to at least see what Watson can do, even if I’d just call it a sunk cost and move on.

But with three quarterbacks under contract and a deep 2027 class on the horizon, Cleveland has no reason to get involved in this year’s class, especially since two of the team’s three quarterbacks were 2025 rookies.

Pittsburgh Steelers

If any team in this article decided to just go out and draft Ty Simpson because they didn’t want to wait, this is the most understandable team, though that doesn’t mean that the Pittsburgh Steelers should go after Simpson.

Pittsburgh is in a weird spot right now. The team moved on from Mike Tomlin after years of being in purgatory post-Big Ben, but replaced him with Mike McCarthy, another win-now coach on a team without a viable long-term answer at quarterback. I guess the Steelers thought they could just re-sign Aaron Rodgers, but his indecision about his future continues and is expected to stretch past the NFL Draft, so…what do you do now?

It depends. If the Steelers want to win in 2026 and Rodgers doesn’t give them an answer fast enough, I would understand why, based on the directives of the front office, they’d draft Simpson. He’s probably going to do a better job getting you to the postseason than Will Howard would in the event that Rodgers retires.

But it’s not what the Steelers should do here. The team should be content to finally tank, starting Howard all season and likely losing a lot of football games to FINALLY put the team in position to draft a quarterback with long-term upside. I just don’t trust the Steelers to actually do that, considering the McCarthy hire and the fact that the team seems stuck in the mindset of gunning for a playoff berth every season no matter what.

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