The mysterious absence of first-round draft pick Josh Simmons from the Kansas City Chiefs entered its sixth day on Friday, when head coach Andy Reid confirmed that the 22-year-old rookie did not take part in practice again on Friday.
But Simmons’ Friday absence was only the latest in an alarming and puzzling series of developments that one reporter called “ominous” and “eerie for Simmons as a person.”
Bobby Burack, a journalist for the sports media site
Outkick, was referring to the seemingly shifting stories given by the team to explain Simmons’ absence, and the fact that Simmons’ teammates — including the face of the franchise quarterback Patrick Mahomes — were caught by surprise by the former Ohio State offensive lineman’s absence from the team just hours before last week’s
Sunday Night Football matchup with the Detroit Lions.
Simmons Officially ‘Out’ vs. Raiders
The Chiefs announced later on Friday that Simmons would not play for the second consecutive week on Sunday when the Chiefs are scheduled to host the Las Vegas Raiders at at Arrowhead Stadium. On the Chiefs injury report, Simmons was the only player listed as “out” for Sunday’s game.
“Forget that he a superstar rookie protecting the best QB in the NFL, this timeline is eerie for Simmons as a person,” wrote Burack in a social media post on Wednesday. “And the fact that none of the reports have said what is going on adds another scary twist to it.”
According to Burack’s Outkick report published the following evening, the Chiefs appear to have violated or at least ignored their own internal procedures for handling the Simmons situation — with no real explanation as to why.
“It also appears that the standard communication process for a player missing a game was not followed,” wrote Burack. “If it had been, Mahomes and the coaching staff would have known before warm-ups that their starting left tackle was in another state.”
Simmons Returned to California: Report
Simmons, according to ESPN Chiefs reporter Nate Taylor, departed the team at an “extremely unusual” time on the day of the Lions game, and traveled to California. Simmons is a native of San Diego, and played his first season of college football at San Diego State before entering the transfer portal and arriving at Ohio State where he was part of the Buckeyes’ national championship squad last season.
According to other media reports, Simmons on the same day that he departed the Chiefs, deleted his Instagram account. But whether that move is related to the situation responsible for his absence also remains unknown.
Chiefs Give Shifting Reasons For Rookie’s Absence
The Chiefs have also given three different reasons for Simmons’ absence, first listing him as suffering from an unspecified “illness,” then subsequently describing Simmons’ situation as “personal,” but also as “a family matter.”
“Based on the team’s listing, it’s clear the issue is not a physical injury. However, the word ‘illness’ is vague — it could mean a physical ailment, a mental health struggle, or something else entirely,” Burack wrote in his
Outkick report.
“The reports of a ‘family’ situation are equally unclear. We don’t know whether the issue involves a family member or if Simmons himself is going through something for which he feels he needs his family for support,” Burack continued.
“The tone surrounding the story has grown ominous. By all indications, Josh Simmons is facing something serious — serious enough to cause him to miss start(s) in the NFL, his quarterback to pray for him, and his team to say nothing publicly,” the
Outkick reporter wrote.
Also unclear, as noted by Burack, is how much Reid and the Chiefs organization itself knows about the reasons for Simmons’ departure from the team, or if the coach — or anyone else working for the Chiefs — has been in communication with Simmons since he, reportedly, returned to California.
Nor have the Chiefs given any indication of a timeline for Simmons’ return. In a radio interview Thursday, Taylor speculated that Simmons could be out until “a month from now,” but also left open the possibility that if the lineman cannot get “a chance to get back to normalcy,” he may not return at all.
Colts’ move fans slammed is quickly turning into a masterstroke
Many doubted…
Indianapolis Colts’ fans haven’t had all that much to cheer about since Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement after the 2018 season. One of the more pleasant stories in those drab days concerned Will Fries.
Fries was selected in the seventh round of the 2021 draft. The end of the seventh round, just ten spots away from being Mr. Irrelevant. The last of 13 guards taken that year. Nonetheless, Fries was starting at right guard by his second season and was firmly entrenched by his third. He did it with hard work, toughness, and smarts. It was the kind of make-good story everyone loves.
When he got hurt in 2024, it put both the player and the team in a bit of a bind. Fries’s rookie contract was up. He was scheduled to be a free agent. What would the market be? A steady young guard on the rise. An injury. Could Chris Ballard afford to re-sign him? That’s the standard blueprint, isn’t it? Identify a quality player in the draft, develop him, and lock him up long term. Then repeat the process at another position.
Matt Goncalves is making Indianapolis Colts’ fans forget all about Will Fries
In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 season, many publications urged Ballard to make retaining Fries a priority. Many fans agreed. Sign him, and the team is set at guard for the foreseeable future. But it soon became clear that despite his injury, the price tag for Fries was going to be high. Ballard had a tough decision.
In hindsight, two things probably impacted what the GM chose to do. The first was the reality of roster construction in the salary cap era. The second was the presence of Matt Goncalves.
The Colts were already paying left guard Quenton Nelson commensurate with what a future Hall of Famer still in his prime deserves. Shelling out major dollars to the right guard would throw the roster balance out of whack. Few teams can afford to have so much of their cap space devoted to two interior linemen.
Ballard needed to extend left tackle Bernhard Raimann, and that was going to be very difficult if he was to equal the market price for Fries. Minnesota ended up signing Fries to a five-year, $87 million deal, roughly half of which was guaranteed. Though bonuses reduce his cap hit this season to a little under six million, it will balloon in subsequent years into the $20 million range.
Meanwhile, Matt Goncalves was about to enter his second year. The 2024 third-round pick out of Pittsburgh still had three years left on a rookie contract that owed him a little over a million dollars per season. Clearly, he was a better bargain. The question was, could he play?
Goncalves entered the league as a tackle. In his rookie year, that’s where he took his snaps. When Fries went down last year, another rookie – UDFA Dalton Tucker – picked up some of the slack. Late in the season, the team brought Mark Glowinski back to town to provide some veteran play. But neither Glowinski nor Tucker looked like a viable option to start in 2025.
A plan emerged to shift Goncalves inside to right guard. Shifting a college tackle to guard is fairly common in today’s NFL. The Cowboys’ Tyler Smith made the transition and then made the Pro Bowl. One of the veterans Ballard was urged to sign this offseason – the since-retired Brandon Scherff – was a college tackle who became an All-Pro guard in the NFL.
So far, the move has worked even better than most fans could have hoped. Despite a relatively poor game against Arizona in Week 6, Goncalves currently grades out as the 24th-best guard in the league, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required). That has him ranked ahead of the aforementioned Tyler Smith as well as Carolina’s Robert Hunt – both Pro Bowlers in 2024.
Even more significantly, he is ranked twelve spots ahead of Will Fries.
PFF rankings are not perfect. Matt Goncalves, rankings aside, may not be better than Will Fries. But that ranking, combined with the eye test, is a pretty good indicator of the fact that Ballard made the right decision. Goncalves is pairing with Nelson (second in the PFF rankings) to give Indianapolis one of the best guard tandems in the league.
And at just 24 years old, he has nowhere to go but up.
