Former Clemson star Isaiah Simmons is highly motivated and determined heading into his sixth NFL season.

A former top-10 overall draft pick, Simmons is eager for the fresh start he now has with the Green Bay Packers – his third different team since he entered the NFL in 2020. 

After signing a one-year deal with the Packers in free agency this offseason, Simmons believes he has found a great fit in Green Bay.

“The NFL, a big part of it as about what situation you’re in and where you’re at. Placement matters, and every system doesn’t fit everybody,” Simmons said to the media recently. “Honestly, I feel like this is the most comfortable in a system I’ve been since I’ve been in the league. Of course, you want to be somewhere through your whole career. But like I said, I’d rather be in a better system than be with one team the whole time.”

Simmons, who was selected by the Arizona Cardinals with the No. 8 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, has spent the last two seasons playing for the New York Giants. He was traded to New York from the Cardinals prior to the 2023 season and then re-signed with the Giants as a free agent last offseason.

When a player is drafted as high as Simmons was, it comes with a lot of expectations, both on the outside and internally. Looking back at the journey he’s been on to get to this point in his career, Simmons admitted it has been “difficult” and “frustrating” at times.

“But I’m very faithful,” he added. “I believe God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. So, times when I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, I’ve got to use his eyes. So, there’s been times where maybe self-doubt or whatever it may be. You try not to hear the media and what not, but it happens. It’s going to come up at some time. You’re going to see some stuff.

“So, I’m not here to impress nobody. I know who I am as a person, I know what I can do on the field. I’ve done it. People have seen it. So, I’m just going to keep doing what I gotta do and I’m going to let the outside noise be what it’s gotta be. It has been frustrating, but ultimately, I try to treat everything as a lesson. So, you’ve got to learn from it. You can either take it and build from it, or you can let it hold you down.”

Simmons went on to say that his time with the Giants “lit a fire” under him.

“I’m actually very grateful for New York, for what they did,” he said. “They lit a fire in me. So, I’m ready to go.”

What was it about the experience in New York that lit the fire?

Simmons said part of it’s due to the lack of snaps he got in New York. He started just five of the 34 games he played in with the Giants over the last two seasons, including just one start in 17 games last season. In those 17 games in 2024, he had 146 snaps on special teams but logged only 181 defensive snaps after playing 377 snaps on defense the year before.

“I mean, I’m just a competitor at the end of the day. I just want to be out there on the field, try to help the guys as much as I can,” he said. “There was games where maybe I had like three snaps, and it’d be like kickoff, all touchbacks. So, it was just a lot of times where I just maybe couldn’t put the pieces to the puzzle together on why things like that were happening.

“So, it was frustrating, but the only thing it did was when the season ended, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘This will never happen again.’ So, at the end of the day, coaches make the decisions, but it’s up to me to make the decision hard for them. So, I vowed to myself that I would make the decision hard for every single coach in the future.”

In his NFL career to this point, Simmons has shown flashes of the versatility, athleticism and overall potential and talent that enticed the Cardinals to take him near the top of the 2020 draft.

Simmons possesses unique ability to be a chess piece that can be deployed in a variety of ways on the defensive side of the ball. But while he provides value with his versatility, he called that versatility “a little bit of a gift and a curse.”

“I think really what I ran into most of my career is everybody wants me to do everything, opposed to letting me get really good at one thing first,” he said. “And I fully believe in Haf’s [Packers defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley’s] plan. He’s letting me just lock in and really learn a small portion first before we even think about expanding to anything else.

“That’s something I really appreciated because I never really had that opportunity to really just hone in on one position. It’s hard enough to get into the NFL, let alone stay, as well as be effective at a position. So, being able to lock in on one thing and do that 111 every day, that’s been, I feel like, huge for me.”

Last season with the Giants, Simmons tallied 21 total tackles, one quarterback hit, a forced fumble and two passes defended.

In 84 games (42 starts) over his NFL career with the Cardinals and Giants from 2020-24, the 26-year-old Simmons has recorded 329 total tackles (15 for loss), 8.5 sacks, 13 quarterback hits, 21 passes defended, nine forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and five interceptions, including two he returned for touchdowns.

Prior to entering the NFL, Simmons played at Clemson from 2016-19. He transitioned from safety in 2017 to the starting nickel/sam linebacker position in 2018 and was eventually named the Butkus Award winner as the nation’s top linebacker in 2019 in only his second year at the position.

Simmons spoke about why he’s a good fit for Jeff Hafley, who is entering his second season as the Packers’ defensive coordinator after serving as head coach at Boston College from 2020-23.

“Every coordinator, they run their defenses different, have different nuances within their game,” Simmons said. “And I just feel like Haf’s defense just fits me better, just with how my skill type was, how I came – more so, of how I kind of played in college. He was in college recently, so that could be a part of it. But I just like his vision, his creativity. I feel like I need to be with a guy who’s creative, so kudos to him for that.”