Isaiah Simmons NFL Career: The Top-10 Pick Who Played Five Positions and Mastered None
Eight picks into the 2020 NFL Draft, the Arizona Cardinals selected a player who had, in his final college season, lined up at inside linebacker, outside linebacker, slot cornerback, free safety, and defensive end. Not across four years – in the same season. Scouts ran out of comparisons. Some reached for “unicorn.” The Cardinals passed on a cornerback and a wide receiver to take him. Four years later, they traded him for a seventh-round pick.
Clemson Built Something That Didn’t Translate
Simmons grew up in Olathe, Kansas, played defensive back and wide receiver at Olathe North High School, and committed to Clemson in February 2016. He redshirted his first year, then played safety in 2017 – 49 tackles, one sack, unremarkable. The coaching staff moved him to linebacker in 2018, and that’s when the numbers started getting unusual. He finished with 89 tackles, three forced fumbles, six pass breakups, one interception, and a national championship ring. Scouts covering Clemson were already writing first-round reports.
His 2019 season made the conversation absurd. 104 tackles. Seven sacks. Three interceptions. Eight pass breakups. He took home the Butkus Award – given to the nation’s best linebacker – and the ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Those two honors, on their own, would have made him a first-round pick. The positional versatility on top of them made him something else entirely.
Then came Indianapolis. At the 2020 NFL Combine, Simmons posted a 4.39-second 40-yard dash at 225 pounds. That’s cornerback speed in a linebacker’s body. His vertical was 39 inches. His broad jump was 11 feet, 3 inches. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. had him ranked as the top outside linebacker in the class. Todd McShay had him fifth overall. He ran faster than most of the defensive backs in the building that week, and he was listed as a linebacker. Draft boards moved.
The problem – and it’s the central problem of his entire career – is that nobody knew exactly what that meant for a 53-man NFL roster. Versatility at Clemson, where Dabo Swinney could build a defense around a generational athlete’s specific skills, is not the same thing as having a defined NFL role. The Cardinals would spend four years trying to figure out the difference.
Arizona: Four Years of Looking for a Position
Vance Joseph, Arizona’s defensive coordinator in Simmons’ rookie year, did not trust him. That’s not a characterization – Joseph said it directly. “He wanted to be a starter from day one,” Joseph told ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss, “and he just wasn’t ready.” Through the first seven weeks of the 2020 season, Simmons saw limited snaps. In Week 7 against Seattle, he played just five defensive snaps – then intercepted Russell Wilson in overtime to win the game. The Cardinals named him to the PFWA All-Rookie Team anyway. He finished with 54 tackles, two sacks, two pass breakups. For any other rookie, a solid year. For the eighth overall pick with no proper offseason because of COVID, a mixed signal.
2021 was the year that made people think he’d figured it out. He started all 17 games, finished third on the team with 105 tackles, added four forced fumbles and 1.5 sacks, and in Week 7 against New Orleans he returned an interception 56 yards for his first NFL touchdown. The Cardinals went 11-6 that year, their best record in over a decade. Simmons looked like a piece of something real.
2022 was his most statistically complete season in Arizona. Ninety-nine tackles (68 solo), four sacks, two interceptions, seven passes defended, two forced fumbles. He started 13 of 17 games. No Pro Bowl selection. No All-Pro votes. The Cardinals went 4-13. And then in May 2023, general manager Monti Ossenfort declined Simmons’ fifth-year option. That’s the decision that told you everything. His fifth-year value would have been around $10 million. The Cardinals said no.
The film explained why. Big Blue View’s Nick Falato tracked his 2,297 career snaps in Arizona and found that 1,086 came in the box, 645 over the slot, 436 on the defensive line, 67 at outside cornerback, and 63 at safety. The Cardinals deployed him everywhere and committed to nowhere. In run defense specifically, analysts at Giants Country noted his tendency to get caught in traffic, lose lane integrity, and get blocked out of plays he should have made. His missed tackle rate was a respectable 10.5 percent – not a liability, but not the number you want from a player asked to anchor your front seven. The athleticism that made him unmissable at Clemson occasionally became a liability in the NFL, where physicality without diagnosis gets you blocked.
The Kliff Kingsbury era in Arizona was a disaster by most measures, and a new front office had no particular attachment to Simmons. In August 2023, they traded him to the New York Giants. The return: a 2024 seventh-round pick. For context, the Panthers had considered taking Simmons seventh overall in 2020 before selecting defensive tackle Derrick Brown. Brown is now a cornerstone of Carolina’s defense. Simmons went for a seventh-round pick. That gap tells the story more cleanly than any stat.
The Giants Gave Him the Defense He Was Built For
Wink Martindale’s defense in New York ran quarter personnel – seven or more defensive backs – on more than 10 percent of snaps. It was, on paper, the closest thing in the NFL to what Clemson had built around Simmons. Positionless. Multiple. Built for athletes who don’t fit a single label. The Giants paid a seventh-round pick for a player whose athleticism hadn’t diminished at all, who was only 25 years old, and who had a legitimate grievance with how he’d been deployed.
His first season in New York had real moments. He played in all 17 games, started four, and in Week 11 against Washington he picked off Sam Howell and returned it for a touchdown. Fifty total tackles, one sack, three passes defended. Not a starter’s production, but not nothing either. The Giants re-signed him in April 2024 for one year at $2 million – a bet that the system fit would eventually produce more.
It produced one extraordinary special teams play. On October 6, 2024, against Seattle, Simmons blocked a Jason Myers field goal attempt that Bryce Ford-Wheaton returned for a touchdown. Giants won 29-20. Simmons won NFC Special Teams Player of the Week. For a former top-10 pick, winning a special teams award is complicated news.
The Giants did not re-sign him after the 2024 season. Thirty-four games over two years, 100 total tackles, two touchdowns – one defensive, one special teams. Martindale’s offense-that-was-supposed-to-be-made-for-him produced roughly what Arizona had. The change of scenery didn’t change the ceiling.
Green Bay Cut Him. Carolina Kept Calling.
In April 2025, the Green Bay Packers signed Simmons. In their three preseason games, he led the team with 19 total tackles – 14 solo. That’s the kind of preseason performance that should earn a roster spot. On August 26, 2025, the Packers released him as part of final cuts anyway.
Three months passed. No team signed him to a 53-man roster. In late November 2025, the Carolina Panthers – the team that nearly drafted him fifth in 2020, who chose Derrick Brown instead – added him to their practice squad. Injuries at the linebacker position opened the spot.
He played five regular-season games, almost entirely on special teams. One of his 88 snaps came on defense. Then in the Wild Card playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams, with the Panthers trailing late in the fourth quarter, Simmons blocked a punt. It set up a lead-changing touchdown. Carolina still lost, 34-31, but the blocked punt was the kind of play that keeps a roster spot warm.
On March 10, 2026, the Panthers re-signed him. Per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the expectation is that a full offseason in Carolina’s playbook gives him a genuine shot at defensive snaps in 2026 – not just special teams coverage. He’s 27. His athleticism hasn’t faded. Whether the Panthers have the right scheme to finally use him correctly, or whether this is another version of the same story, is genuinely unclear – and that’s one of the only honest things you can say about where his career stands.
The Bust Question Has a Complicated Answer
The honest case against Isaiah Simmons isn’t that he was bad. It’s that “eighth overall pick” sets a specific bar, and he never cleared it. Six Pro Bowl selections would have been the expectation for a player taken that high at his position. He has zero. He’s never been named All-Pro. His best individual season – 2022 in Arizona – didn’t earn a single postseason honor. By the standard his draft position set, the gap is real and it doesn’t close.
The complicating case is worth making, though. He accumulated 258 tackles, 75 stops, 32 pressures, 13 tackles for loss, 11 QB hits, 16 passes defended, seven forced fumbles, and 8.5 sacks across 89 career games. A 10.5 percent missed tackle rate is better than average for a linebacker. He made big plays – the Howell pick-six, the Cardinals’ overtime win against Russell Wilson’s Seahawks in 2020, the blocked punt in the playoffs. These aren’t the numbers of a player who couldn’t play in the NFL.
What he never did was anchor a defense. Never forced a coordinator to build around him. Never made a team say, “we need to account for 54 on every snap.” The athleticism that made him irresistible in the draft turned out to be more useful to the scouts evaluating him than to the coaches trying to deploy him. Being able to play five positions is only valuable if you’re excellent at one of them – excellent enough that the other four become bonuses, not the main pitch. For Simmons, the versatility was always the main pitch. That’s a problem that doesn’t fix itself with a new team or a new defensive coordinator.
Three teams now – Arizona, New York, Green Bay – looked at him with a full offseason of information and decided he wasn’t worth a guaranteed roster spot at his draft pedigree’s implied price. Carolina is the fourth attempt. He’s shown enough to stay in the league. He hasn’t shown enough to change the verdict on the pick.
Where the Numbers Actually Land
Across six NFL seasons and 89 games, Simmons has 258 tackles (189 solo), 8.5 sacks, three interceptions, 16 passes defended, seven forced fumbles, and two defensive touchdowns. His best tackle season was 2022 in Arizona with 99. His best sack season was also 2022 with four. He’s never missed a game due to injury – 89 appearances across six seasons, which is a real number and one that gets overlooked in bust discussions. Players who stay healthy have value, even when that value doesn’t show up in the way draft position promises.
His PFF grade for 2025 came in at 60.0 overall, ranking among the lower tier of qualified linebackers, though the sample size – one defensive snap in the regular season – makes the number almost meaningless. His career PFF grades in Arizona and New York were similarly mid-tier: not the kind of numbers that sink a player, but not the kind that justify top-10 money either.
For context on what the eighth overall pick typically produces: in the same 2020 draft, the seventh pick was Derrick Brown, who became the defensive anchor Carolina built around. The ninth pick was Andrew Thomas, who became one of the better offensive linemen in the NFC. Simmons sits between two players who delivered on their draft positions. That’s the uncomfortable company the career record forces.
What 2026 Actually Looks Like
The Panthers’ decision to re-sign Simmons in March 2026 wasn’t charity. They watched him in their building for six weeks at the end of 2025, saw what he could do on special teams, and made a calculation that an offseason of installation might unlock something defensively. The organization knows the playbook better than any team he’s been with since Clemson, and there’s a reasonable argument that familiarity with a system is what Simmons has always needed most.
He turns 28 in July. His speed hasn’t visibly declined – the blocked punt and special teams work in 2025 required the same closing burst that made scouts lose their minds at the 2020 Combine. The question has never been his athleticism. It’s whether a defensive coordinator can hand him a specific, narrow job description, resist the temptation to use him everywhere, and let him build genuine mastery at something before asking him to do five other things.
No coordinator has managed that yet. Carolina’s Dave Canales and his staff are the fourth group to try. Simmons was an all-time prospect at Clemson, a frustrating career in Arizona, a capable reserve in New York, a preseason standout cut by Green Bay, and a special teamer who blocked a playoff punt. That’s the full picture. The Panthers are betting there’s a chapter after it.
Comments