Expect Simmons to push for a 53-man roster spot in 2025
FOX Sport’s Jordan Schultz is reporting that the Green Bay Packers will be signing linebacker Isaiah Simmons, who was the eighth overall pick of the 2020 draft. Simmons was originally drafted by the Arizona Cardinals, who traded him to the New York Giants in 2023 for a seventh-round pick. He’s spent the last two years in New York, where he played on a one-year, $2,000,000 deal in 2024.
— Justis Mosqueda (@JuMosq) April 28, 2025
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.
Isaiah Simmons was drafted in round 1 with pick 8 in the 2020 draft class. He scored a 9.97 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 7 out of 2073 LB from 1987 to 2020.
Highly drafted, but didn’t live up to the hype. https://t.co/NxJMB6xztp pic.twitter.com/LbEzXjJLQN
— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) April 21, 2025
At 6’4” 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’t ever been impressive, never cracking a 70 grade on PFF, he had an 88.2 special-teams rating in 2024.
— Isaiah Simmons (@isaiahsimmons25) April 27, 2025
Simmons visited the Packers before the 2025 NFL Draft, so his addition isn’t out of left field. The team is also only carrying six off-ball linebackers on its 91-man roster, 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, and Kristian Welch, who performed well for Green Bay in the 2024 preseason, for the final spot or two on the linebacker depth chart.
Another name to watch at linebacker is Wyoming’s Connor Shay, who is expected to be the number one pick in the Canadian Football League’s draft on Tuesday. Shay is going to attend the Packers’ rookie minicamp this weekend on a tryout basis. Generally, Green Bay signs a couple of tryout players after the event.