Patrick Mahomes can’t shake Justin Simmons like he does everyone else
By Matt Conner
If we're going to give credit where credit is due, then we need to say a lot about Justin Simmons.
On Sunday night, the Atlanta Falcons hosted the Kansas City Chiefs in a Week 3 primetime showdown which was getting big billing for the home team as an important game and Justin Simmons showed up ready to do his part to make it an appearance to remember.
On the Chiefs' opening drive, the Chiefs were putting together a long, sustained drive featuring short gains into the red zone when Patrick Mahomes threw up a floating pass to tight end Noah Gray. Things did not end well.
That's Falcons safety Justin Simmons jumping in front of the ball to grab it and end the Chiefs drive with zero points shortly after Kirk Cousins made quick work of the Chiefs' defense with an efficient touchdown drive to start the game.
Normally an interception wouldn't warrant anything more than a quick nod, but Simmons is a man with some sort of odd mastery over Mahomes—a rare place, indeed, given Mahomes' place among the best quarterbacks in NFL history. Very, very few players can say they've owned Mahomes on multiple occasions, but Simmons has come up big time and again against the Chiefs in his career.
For the sake of review, Simmons was a longtime member of the Denver Broncos secondary and, as such, played the Chiefs twice a year for the last eight seasons. Simmons was on injured reserve for one fo those games, but otherwise, he's faced the Chiefs 15 times in his career and Mahomes was the quarterback in 12 of those games. This makes the 13th appearance against the Chiefs star.
Simmons has six total inteceptions now against Mahomes in his career and seven against Andy Reid and the Chiefs.
Yeah, that's credit well-deserved.