SEATTLE — After making the play of the day in the Giants' 29-20 win over the Seahawks on Sunday, Isaiah Simmons looked inward and reflected on how he got here.
“Personally, I'm not going to lie, I felt a sense of relief,” Simmons said. “As I think everyone knows, the season hasn't gone the way we wanted it to. So it's been a few minutes since I've been able to make a big play for my team, so I feel some kind of relief. Yes, since last year.”
Simmons is used to playing defense, but he is not part of the Giants' defensive rotation.
His role was almost exclusively on special teams, and he found a way to make impactful plays.
During the game, the Giants were waiting to use a special field goal blocking play set up by special teams coordinator Michael Ghobrial.
Head coach Brian Daboll asked multiple times during the game where it was, but Ghobrial kept saying, “Not yet, not yet.”
The Giants held a two-point lead in the second half, but they didn't need to.
But with the Seahawks losing 23-20, overtime seemed to be on the horizon when Jason Myers lined up for a 47-yard field goal with 55 seconds left.
Gobrial called and Simmons confirmed that OT was not available.
At 6-foot-4, Simmons doesn't have a fixed position on defense, but he was the perfect choice for this play.
He was athletic enough to actually jump over Seahawks lineman Laken Tomlinson and land, then immediately jump again.
Simmons got so high that the ball actually hit his left forearm and fell to the grass, where Bryce Ford-Wheaton scooped it up and raced 60 yards for the game-clinching touchdown.
“I really wanted to run that play because I knew I was going to block that kick,” Simmons said. “I knew it. Sometimes you just know.
“The most important thing was that I could jump high enough and that it really didn't matter. The first thing that came to mind after I realized that I was clear The thing was, if you touch, jump, jump, jump, you have to get back on track as soon as you get on your feet. I got right back to it. I was just trying to go straight up and down and block.”
And when you saw the ball hit the ground and a teammate picked it up to lead the Giants to victory?
“I knew this was going to happen, so all I could say was 'I told you so,'” Simmons said.
This didn't surprise his teammates.
“I knew he could do it. He's a tremendous athlete,” defensive end Brian Burns said. “He won the game. He brought us home, he's the one who did it.”
Simmons isn't happy about not playing a role on defense and admits it's tough to sit back and watch.
He is a former first-round draft pick of the Cardinals and played a lot of defensive work for the Giants when Wink Martindale was their coordinator.
The Giants chose to re-sign him this season, but he won't be able to crack Shane Bowen's lineup.
“I'm happy for him. He embraced his role,” defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence said.
“The thing that hurts the most for me is not not being a starter, just the fact that I know I can help the team and I can't help the team,” Simmons said. “That’s probably the feeling that was running through me when I was going back out there and feeling like Isaiah, feeling like I’m a playmaker.”
