The Arizona Cardinals are trading fourth-year safety Isaiah Simmons to the New York Giants in exchange for a seventh round pick.
The former top ten pick is entering the final year of his rookie deal after the Cardinals declined to pick up his fifth year option. He played in all 17 games for the Cardinals last season and was on the field for 80.6% of their defensive snaps. His 20 defensive stops ranked sixth on the team, whilst he finished third with five forced incompletions.
Why the Cardinals moved on
Simmons was an enticing prospect coming out of Clemson, offering impressive alignment versatility and an outstanding athletic profile. That never really translated to success on the NFL field though.
Vance Joseph’s defense posed a challenge for him, as he played various positions without ever discovering a suitable role. In his first two seasons, he primarily operated as a linebacker, but in 2022, he transitioned to the slot and looked much more comfortable.
Another positional switch followed the arrival of Jonathan Gannon, with Simmons moved to a deep safety role, a position he had only played sparingly throughout his career. The results weren’t pretty in preseason, as Simmons gave up 88 yards and a touchdown on four targets.
Why the move makes sense for the Giants
Even if Simmons hasn’t lived up to being a top ten draft pick, it is still easy to see why a team like the Giants would be willing to make a move for him. After all, he has a combination of size and speed that is rare even by NFL standards – Simmons ran a 4.39 40-yard dash at 238 lbs.
Many will also argue that Arizona consistently misused him during his time with the team. They tried to make him into a traditional inside linebacker, a role he has quite clearly never been suited to. Let’s not forget that Arizona did a similar thing with another former first round pick in Haason Reddick. Look how he has fared since leaving the Cardinals.
Simmons should be a far more natural fit in Wink Martindale’s Giants defense. For starters, he has been a productive blitzer throughout his career. Simmons has 32 pressures, including seven sacks, on his 239 career pass rushing snaps.
Martindale loves to blitz opposing quarterbacks (the Giants led the NFL with a 39.7% blitz rate in 2022). The Giants also used safeties as part of their pass rush on 195 occasions in 2022, which once again led the NFL.
He is also the kind of coordinator who fully embraces versatile players, of which Simmons is certainly one. We saw last season how Martindale experimented with hybrid safeties in Landon Collins and Tony Jefferson. He clearly wants to employ players that can do a bit of everything, and Simmons ticks that box.
