The Chiefs would love to stop talking about Josh Simmons. That part is obvious. The problem is that the story keeps finding its way back into the room.
Simmons, the Chiefs’ top pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, has now become a central figure in a season in which he hasn’t played a snap. He has been out for months, long after the club initially expected only a short absence, and last week the Chiefs placed him on injured reserve while saying his rehab had “plateaued.”
That development was supposed to quiet things down. Instead, it only added another layer to a situation that has been messy from the start.
The original source of all this noise goes back nearly 13 months, after a 30-17 win over Detroit at Arrowhead Stadium. Andy Reid spent part of his postgame news conference praising the offensive line and saying, “All of that,” he said, “because the offensive line played well.”
But Simmons’ absence was impossible to ignore. Reid eventually said Simmons was gone “for personal reasons.”
When pressed for more detail, including when the team learned of it, Reid answered with a glare, a slow head shake and then a grimace-smile before saying, “Does it matter?” That moment helped set the tone for everything that followed.
Simmons then missed the next three games, and the explanation remained thin. That sequence, in a way, became the beginning of the skepticism that has hung around him ever since.
The Chiefs have said the back injury Simmons suffered in training camp in St. Joseph is unrelated to what happened a year ago. But because the timeline has stretched so long, and because Simmons has remained unavailable to the media since Aug. 17, the two episodes have been lumped together in the public mind.
Reid has not exactly welcomed the scrutiny, though he has talked about Simmons’ situation more than he usually would for an injured player. Even so, without Simmons or his camp offering their side, the silence has left room for speculation and interpretation.
That vacuum grew again Sunday after an ESPN report describing a recent exchange between Reid and Simmons that resulted in Simmons being asked to leave a meeting to go get treatment. After the Chiefs’ 20-3 loss, Reid was asked about the report and didn’t dispute it, but he pushed back on the idea that it changed the bigger picture.
“Things happen,” he said. “That’s no reason that he was put on IR.
He’s got a bad back. He’s got to get that worked out, and that’s the main thing.
I’ll leave it at that.”
Some read the report as a revealing moment. Others saw it as a sign of frustration from a team that has grown tired of the uncertainty. But the details remain murky, including the most important question of all: who wanted that information out there, and why?
If it came from the Chiefs, it would be hard to imagine that happening without at least Reid’s awareness. He has been plainly worn down by the subject and would rather talk about almost anything else.
That has been clear since the first day. Reid has bristled about Simmons more than any other topic since taking over the Chiefs in 2013.
Friday was the latest example. It was Reid’s first chance to address the issue after Simmons went on IR, and a day after head trainer Rick Burkholder had spoken publicly but taken no questions. When Reid was told Burkholder hadn’t discussed other options beyond rehab, Reid replied, “Then he must not have wanted you to know what the options were,” before defending both the process and Simmons’ work ethic.
Reid still wouldn’t say whether Simmons would rehab with the team or somewhere else. Burkholder, he said, has the plan, and “they’ll stay in touch.”
He also tried to shut the conversation down.
“This isn’t that big of a story,” Reid said. “Let’s focus on the football team and the guys playing.”
But it remains a big story anyway, and Sunday’s 20-3 loss to Seattle only made that harder to ignore. The defeat exposed the Chiefs’ issues up front and, by extension, showed why Simmons’ absence matters so much.
That’s the part Reid cannot seem to escape. The questions will hang around until there’s an actual resolution, whether that means Simmons returns to the field or moves on entirely.
Until then, being out of sight won’t mean out of mind. The mystery around the 23-year-old lingers, and the Chiefs continue to feel it.
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