When he was drafted as a top-ten pick in 2020, Cardinals defender was lauded as a Swiss Army knife that could play all over the field. Despite being labeled a linebacker by the Cardinals over his first three seasons, he’s been utilized quite a bit in the secondary. Earlier this week, though, Simmons announced that, this year, he has solely been working with the defensive backs, and he will continue to do so moving forward, according to Cardinals staff writer Darren Urban.
After making the opposite switch from safety to linebacker in his senior year at Clemson, Simmons displayed proficiency all over the field with a stat line that included over 100 total tackles, 16.5 tackles for loss, eight sacks, three interceptions, eight passes defensed, two forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery. He hasn’t found quite the same success in Arizona but has shown a similar versatility.
I was going to say they’re taking him from a position he was finally really starting to play well at and moving him to a new position. He’s going to have a steep learning curve this season. It’s also kind of a dick move to pull in his contract year.
He had decent numbers last year, but they had basically demoted him before the second game until someone got hurt. To his credit he made a game-winning play in that game and played fairly well the rest of the year, but not enough that they picked up his 5th year option.
Yea those 5th year options are expensive on top 10 picks. It was worth 12.7 million if they picked it up. That’s a lot of cash for a nickel. We got Garnder-Johnson for like 8.
Fair, I just don’t think he had as great a year as his numbers indicate. Or at least that’s what my Arizona fan buddies tell me. The fact that he’s switching positions seems to back that up, though as you say nickel was a big part of it.
Simmons should have been playing S from the beginning and it was stupid to play him at LB IMO. I posted about this prior to the draft and I was firmly in the camp of drafting him.
Even in his last year where he was labeled a “LB”, he still played the majority of snaps at at DB. He was bigger AND faster than Okudah.
I was in the Derrick Brown camp until the combine, he just tested so poorly I didn’t think he had the physical abilities to be a dominant DT like you should be taking at #3oa. He’s turned into a pretty good DT but still probably not worthy of the #3oa pick but still probably the least crappy of the 3.
