Cardinals defender Isaiah Simmons might be the NFL’s biggest shutdown cornerback

Cardinals defender Isaiah Simmons is more than a linebacker — this season, he’s also an occasional shutdown cornerback.

The Arizona Cardinals selected Clemson defensive weapon Isaiah Simmons with the eighth pick in the 2020 draft, and in Simmons’ first NFL season, the Cardinals didn’t seem to know what to do with a player who was as tremendously versatile as Simmons was in college. It’s a problem some teams have with such players — no matter how good that player may be in a raw sense, you have to get him to fit in your system. Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph took all kinds of hits for that, but the coach was defiant that he had the right guy in the right place.

Joseph said that Simmons was the NFL’s best defensive rookie by the end of his inaugural season. In May, Joseph also said that he wanted Simmons, who had to learn how to play six different positions at the NFL level in 2020, to be more comfortable at inside linebacker. So far, it’s been more of the same from a versatility perspective, but Simmons is far more comfortable in those roles.

That’s been the case to a point, but through the Cardinals’ first seven games, per Pro Football Focus, Simmons had played 94 snaps on the defensive line, 229 in the box, 66 in the clot, one at free safety, and eight at outside cornerback. One of those eight snaps at outside cornerback came in Arizona’s Week 4 win over the Rams — the only loss this season for Sean McVay’s team. Here, the Here, the 6-foot-4, 238-pound Simmons took tight end Tyler Higbee through the end zone on the fade ball, and Matthew Stafford had no chance of making the completion.

Fast-forward to Thursday night’s game against the Packers, and this deep sideline route from Aaron Rogers to running back Aaron Jones in the first quarter. Rodgers came into the game down his three best receivers in Davante Adams, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and Allen Lazard, and Jones is a good receiving back, so a deep pass to Jones made sense — especially with a linebacker on him.

Of course, and as the team’s Twitter account intimated, Simmons is no ordinary linebacker.

It’s not often you see a guy that big move with that kind of downfield speed, and have the wherewithal to deflect the pass like that. So, at least on a limited basis, if you wanted to call Isaiah Simmons the NFL’s biggest shutdown cornerback, we wouldn’t stop you. Rodgers made an amazing deep throw, but there are times when you have to tip your hat to the defense and move on.