Ceiling/Floor: Arizona Cardinals Trade Isaiah Simmons to the New York Giants For 7th Round Pick

Welcome to Ceiling/Floor where I dissect trades, signings, firings and hirings in order to determine the best case and worst case scenarios.

𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: #Cardinals trade S/LB Isaiah Simmons to the #Giants for a 7th round pick, per @AdamSchefter pic.twitter.com/GD7Zgwkicq

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) August 24, 2023

The New York Giants acquired Isaiah Simmons from the Arizona Cardinals for a 7th-round pick.

Ceiling

New York Giants

I desperately wanted the New York Giants to draft Isaiah Simmons in the 2020 Draft (although they ended up selecting Andrew Thomas who lowkey might be the best offensive tackle in the NFL). The 2019 Giants were the 30th-ranked defense and the roster was full of random dudes. Shout out to David Mayo but nah, the team needed stars.

Simmons’s ability to line up at either the linebacker position or at safety instantly makes him the most dynamic player on the team outside of Kayvon Thibodeaux.

Giants defensive coordinator, Wink Martindale, is obsessed with blitzing. Simmons is the secret weapon to unlock new blitz packages as he can pretend to line up on the line of scrimmage only to drop back in coverage and defend anyone out there. Or the opposite where he pretends to be in coverage only to blitz the QB.

In 2019, Simmons won the Butkus Award. He was the best linebacker in the nation. The Giants traded a bullshit 7th-round pick for a 25-year-old capable of being the best player on their team.

Decent move.

Arizona Cardinals

Here’s the best-case scenario for the Cardinals:

We’re officially in the running for Caleb Williams pic.twitter.com/pyjDgQdWGV

— Michael 🇲🇽 (@RespectMyCos) August 24, 2023

Keep Kyler Murray on the PUP list as long as possible. Trading away Isaiah Simmons is only the first step of a larger project. Any guys drafted by the previous regime who are coming up on new contracts should be trying to get out of their leases today. Burn it all to the ground, lose every game and draft Caleb Williams.

Floor

New York Giants

Great players don’t often get traded for 7th-round draft picks so there’s a very good chance Arizona knows something about Isaiah Simmons that New York doesn’t know: he sucks.

Also, Simmons doesn’t want to play linebacker which is why he’s also a safety but his value comes from playing both. If Simmons doesn’t get along with Martindale and the two start beefing over where he’s playing then yea, they wasted their time on this project.

Arizona Cardinals

If Isaiah Simmons becomes the star I thought he was capable of being on Draft day, ya know, popping up in commercials and being talked about in the same sentences as the other great defense players in the league then the Cardinals have to internally deal with that.

BUT, if the Cardinals also finish in the middle of the pack because Kyler Murray comes back and accidentally wins them too many games AND Simmons becomes a star then Arizona blew it.

This is why it is imperative to remove all talent from their roster before they fuck around and end up with the No. 6 pick selecting another star linebacker to replace the guy they traded away today.

Just send Kyler Murray to Thailand with Kliff Kingsbury.