Jeffery Simmons, the defensive tackle Tennessee paid to stay, then traded

Photo: Tennessee Titans / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	July 28, 1997 LaSalle Parish
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	First-team All-Pro · Pro Bowl · AFC Defensive Player of the Month · Consensus All-SEC

The day before the Tennessee Titans traded him, Jeffery Simmons told reporters he had heard nothing from his agent and nothing from the front office. “As far as I know, I am going to be here,” he said, according to ESPN. Within a day he belonged to the Chicago Bears, bought with two first-round draft picks, a price no team had paid for a defensive tackle in almost six decades.

That is the odd shape of his career. Simmons spent his best seasons choosing a team that kept losing: he signed on again, wore the captain’s patch, built a charity in Nashville and in the small Mississippi town that raised him. He did everything a franchise asks of the player it calls its cornerstone, and learned that a long contract guarantees the money, not the address.

He was born in Louisiana in July 1997 and grew up in Macon, a town of about 2,500 people in Noxubee County, Mississippi, one of five children raised by a single mother. He has described a childhood spent moving “from house to house and apartment to apartment.” At Noxubee County High School he won back-to-back state championships, became a five-star recruit and chose Mississippi State over Alabama and Ole Miss.

Then, in March 2016, a video spread online showing him repeatedly hitting a woman who was on the ground, during a fight in Macon that involved his sister and his mother. He was charged with simple assault and disturbing the peace, pleaded no contest to simple assault, paid a fine and restitution, and was found guilty of malicious mischief. Mississippi State admitted him anyway, with a one-game suspension. The clip followed him: in January 2019 the NFL kept him out of the Scouting Combine under its policy on prospects with a history of violence. It sits awkwardly beside the later story of the community captain, and the honest version of his biography carries both. The Titans’ praise for his work off the field is real and documented; so is the reason the league once refused to let him through its door.

On the field, the case for him was never in doubt. He was a consensus All-SEC pick as a sophomore in 2017 and declared for the draft after the 2018 season. In February 2019 he tore his ACL while training for it. Tennessee took him 19th overall that April regardless, opened his rookie year with him on the non-football injury list and watched him sack Philip Rivers in his first NFL game that October.

The team he joined was winning. The Titans reached the AFC Championship Game in his rookie season and won the division in each of the next two. In the Divisional Round after the 2021 season he sacked Joe Burrow three times in a 19–16 home loss to Cincinnati. It is still the last playoff game he has played.

After that the floor gave way: 7–10, 6–11, then 3–14 twice. Simmons made Pro Bowls in 2021 and 2022, and in April 2023 signed a four-year, $94 million extension. At the press conference he broke down talking about “generational wealth” and about his mother raising five children on her own. “That’s my motivation,” he said.

His best season came on one of the worst teams in football. In 2025 he made first-team All-Pro with a career-high 11 sacks, was named AFC Defensive Player of the Month for December and caught a one-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback Cam Ward, his second score as an eligible lineman. In June 2026 Tennessee gave him a three-year, $105.8 million extension, and in September his teammates elected him captain for a sixth straight season.

Away from the stadium he runs the Give Em A Reason Foundation, which he started in 2022 to reach young people through sport. He returns to Macon every year for a community day, a Thanksgiving turkey drive and a Christmas shopping spree, and the Titans made him their nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award three seasons running, from 2023 to 2025. For 2026 he pledged $1,980 for every sack to help single parents find stable housing.

None of it held the address in place. On October 29, 2026, Tennessee sent him and a 2028 fifth-round pick to Chicago for the Bears’ first-round picks in 2027 and 2028 plus a 2027 fourth-rounder. ESPN Research counted him as the first defensive tackle since 1967 traded for multiple first-round picks. General manager Ryan Poles was buying a specific skill: Simmons led every defensive tackle in pass-rush win rate, and Next Gen Stats credited him with 28 pressures through seven games, the most at his position, ten of them against double teams.

In Chicago he wears No. 99, because his old Mississippi State teammate Montez Sweat already has 98, and he lines up beside Grady Jarrett. He talks about leadership the way his mentor DeMarcus Ware taught him, telling younger players to chase “a vision and not an outcome.” The Bears set his debut for a Monday night game in Seattle on November 2, 2026, his first prime-time appearance since 2023.

Tennessee kept him through four losing seasons because he kept choosing to stay. Chicago has him because somebody else chose, and the Bears spent two first-round picks on the bet that the last playoff game of his career will not remain that January night against Cincinnati.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, American football, Chicago Bears, Tennessee Titans, Jeffery Simmons, Ryan Poles

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