Big Red
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- Mar 16, 2019
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Simmons, smiling Tuesday in his first meeting with the media since training camp, found a way to get past the inevitable frustration.
It helped after going through a similar situation at Clemson, redshirting his first year and then playing limited snaps as a redshirt freshman. But that didn't make it easy.
"I've always been like the star guy," Simmons said. "I'm not going to lie, (early in the season) it was pretty rough for me, going through that. I had a lot of outside support from family and friends. Even my teammates, saying 'Don't worry about it, you have plenty of years to come along, just be patient, your time will come and when it comes, just take full advantage of it.' Listening to those guys, I feel like I did that, and my time came."
He was all over the field in Seattle, playing a season-high 45 snaps and not only notching the sack but making an impressive down-the-field pass breakup.
From the time he got caught in coverage early in the season in San Francisco, beaten for a long touchdown catch-and-run, Simmons understood quickly the lost offseason and missing preseason games had cost him.
But Simmons also came to realize the slow play the coaches had in mind for his career development was the proper plan.
"I'm a really big critic of myself, and trying to figure out why things were happening and in my mind it was like, 'What did I do wrong?' " Simmons said. "It wasn't really what I did wrong. It was just being patient and being able to learn.
"Sometimes," Simmons said, "things have to fall apart to come together."
On the field, Simmons felt like he just needed to stack snaps and allow him to get into a flow in any particular game. Off the field, he fought hard to keep his self-confidence because if that's lost, "it's hard to come back from that." Now, he's looking like he's blossomed.
"Surprised? Not at all," veteran linebacker Jordan Hicks said.
"You watch him on film and he's not on the screen and then the next thing you know he's making the tackle," Hicks added with a chuckle.
Or, in the case of the first Seattle game, making an interception – on that turned around both a game and a rookie season.
"Patience is always a hard thing," Simmons said. "But most of the time it ends up helping in your favor."
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