Quote:
Originally Posted by TRR
Can't say I'm in love with the pick, but with the way the board fell, I can't say I have too much of an argument against it. Sounds like the recovery is going well, seemed to be moving well at his Pro Day, and the Chiefs seem to be pretty comfortable with it. Ideally, Simmons would redshirt this year, work on getting fully healthy and adding more functional strength for 2026.
Simmons is an athletic freak for his size. Even if he's never back to 100% of what he was before the injury, it should be more than enough to be a successful LT at the NFL level.
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Funny enough - and something nobody's even started to talk about much -- is something we did discuss in the draft forum.
His pass blocking reps are...fine. The 2023 tape is just a solid pass blocker.
Then in 2024 a lot of what we saw from him was run blocking against pretty lousy opposition. You saw the athleticism in those reps when he was out in space blocking in the run game. I think that's where a ton of people are getting the raves about his athleticism; in open space he's really good.
But that doesn't really answer where he got to as compared to his 2023 tape as a pass blocker against advanced pass rushers. And every player he'll face in the NFL is going to be 'advanced' on a college scale.
And before you blow past that, Evan Neal is a guy I think of here. Evan Neal was a crazy good athlete, especially for his size. And a lot of that WAS projection -- how does that dancing bear stuff he did while abusing outmatched dudes at Alabama translate?
Well the answer has been....it hasn't. At all.
Now over time we've seen him develop to the point that he actually uses all that athleticism and power in the same way he used it at Alabama -- to dominate in the run game. But he's never advanced a lick as a pass blocker.
That remains a completely open question with Simmons. Because we just never saw it in 2024 against advanced rushers. That's yet another issue created by the injury -- the unknown it creates isn't just in his rehab. It makes it really difficult to establish even a
baseline for how he's advanced from 2023 into 2024 as a pass blocker.
The 2023 version wasn't a 1st round pick, especially not for a pass-first team. And the 2024 version is just so reliant on projection because we never saw him go against high quality college rushers.