With the final pick in the first round, the Kansas City Chiefs selected Ohio State tackle Josh Simmons. It was quite possibly the least shocking Chiefs draft pick in quite some time, as the two had been linked to each other throughout the offseason and the pairing made sense.
Simmons could have potentially been one of the first tackles off the board had a torn patella tendon not cut his 2024 season short. He had been playing at a high level before that injury so if he bounces back from it, this could go down as the steal of the draft.
Now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, let’s touch on something less-than-stellar from the rookie. It’s not even performance-related. No, this issue is something that Simmons recently admitted that Chiefs fans will cringe at.
“As a little kid, I was a Raiders fan but then I grew up and started having favorite players and stopped being a fan and just watched different players,” Simmons said.
Josh Simmons admits to being a Raiders fan as a kid
It’s never fun to hear a player on your team rooted for a key rival at one point during their lives but Simmons at least clarified he was little when this was the case and eventually just started rooting for players rather than one team. He’s also from California so the Raiders connection isn’t too crazy since they were still in Oakland back then.
It’s easy to get annoyed at Simmons for this but hey, we all make mistakes, right? Nobody’s perfect and it sounds like he eventually found the light and stopped rooting for the Raiders. Simmons was born in 2002, which was the last season the Raiders had won a playoff game (they reached the Super Bowl in the 2002 season) so it’s not even that they were a good team when he was growing up but hey, kids have their reasons for picking whatever team they pick. The important thing here is that he learned from his mistakes.