{"id":8682,"date":"2025-04-29T03:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T03:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/8682\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T03:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T03:25:09","slug":"report-packers-to-sign-former-1st-round-pick-isaiah-simmons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/8682\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Packers to sign former 1st-round pick Isaiah Simmons"},"content":{"rendered":"

FOX Sport\u2019s Jordan Schultz is reporting<\/a> that the Green Bay Packers<\/a> will be signing linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who was the eighth overall pick of the 2020 draft. Simmons was originally drafted by the Arizona Cardinals<\/a>, who traded him to the New York Giants<\/a> in 2023 for a seventh-round pick. He\u2019s spent the last two years in New York, where he played on a one-year, $2,000,000 deal in 2024.<\/p>\n

While he started 37 games in Arizona as a hybrid linebacker-safety, he only started five games over the last two seasons with the Giants defensively. Simmons has reshaped his career to be a special-teams ace, playing 370 snaps over two years (185 per year) for New York compared to just 193 snaps over three years (64 per year) with the Cardinals.<\/p>\n

At 6\u20194\u201d and 238 pounds, Simmons has lined up in the box 1,972 times in his career, in the slot 815 times and at a split-out defensive back or safety position just 160 times, according to Pro Football Focus. While his defensive grades haven\u2019t ever been impressive, never cracking a 70 grade on PFF, he had an 88.2 special-teams rating in 2024.<\/p>\n

Simmons visited the Packers before the 2025 NFL Draft<\/a>, so his addition isn\u2019t out of left field. The team is also only carrying six off-ball linebackers on its 91-man roster<\/a>, despite general manager Brian Gutekunst stating that the team faced struggles when they only rostered five players at the position in the first year of their 4-3 defensive transition in 2024. In all likelihood, this means that Simmons will probably be brought in to compete with undrafted free agent signing Jamon Dumas-Johnson, who was named an NFL draft sleeper by college coaches<\/a>, and Kristian Welch, who performed well for Green Bay in the 2024 preseason, for the final spot or two on the linebacker depth chart.<\/p>\n

Another name to watch at linebacker is Wyoming\u2019s Connor Shay, who is expected to be the number one pick in the Canadian Football League\u2019s draft on Tuesday<\/a>. Shay is going to attend the Packers\u2019 rookie minicamp this weekend on a tryout basis. Generally, Green Bay signs a couple of tryout players after the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOX Sport\u2019s Jordan Schultz is reporting that the Green Bay Packers will be signing linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[620,622,7,2795,29,2703,2702,2704,2725,6,428,621,187,1150,618,3939,5521,2320,528],"class_list":{"0":"post-8682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-acme","9":"tag-company","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-former","12":"tag-front-page","13":"tag-green-bay-packers-depth-chart","14":"tag-green-bay-packers-news","15":"tag-green-bay-packers-roster","16":"tag-isaiah","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-packers","19":"tag-packing","20":"tag-pick","21":"tag-report","22":"tag-round","23":"tag-sign","24":"tag-simmons","25":"tag-st","26":"tag-to"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114419120380308845","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}