Andy Reid: LT Josh Simmons will "definitely be ready for training camp"

The Chiefs had a significant left tackle problem last season, as All-Pro guard Joe Thuney ended up being the team's best option at the position late in the year.

But after trading Thuney to the Bears and bringing in Jaylon Moore as a free agent, Kansas City may have stabilized the position by selecting Ohio State's Josh Simmons at No. 32 overall on Thursday night.

Simmons suffered a torn patellar tendon in his left knee in October. But head coach Andy Reid told reporters on Thursday night that the Chiefs did extensive medical research on him and feel the incoming rookie is in a good place.

“[I]t’s healed well,” Reid said in his press conference. “He’s gone through all the re-checks that he’s been required to do. And we’ll just see where it goes from there, whether he does the rookie minicamp or not. We’ll just see once he gets here what he can do there. But he’s done well. Those are normally six month or so injuries and he’s right about that time out from being injured.

“He’ll definitely be ready for training camp, yeah,” Reid added. “But he’ll be able to do some stuff up until then, before that.”

Simmons himself noted that he still has work to do in his rehab, but he’s motivated to get it done.

“I still have to haul ass in recovery — and again, like I said — I’m at the Kansas City Chiefs. So there’s no time to take breaths,” Simmons said, via Pete Sweeney of ArrowheadPride.com. “If anything, it’s where you gotta start forming it more than you ever have. So I’ll take a couple of days to just kind of take in that process and get that behind me, but then, right after that, you’re going into a really, really, really good football club.”

But with Simmons in tow, the Chiefs have addressed and potentially stabilized one of the game’s most important positions.

“It was one of those things where it was obviously a need. These guys are hard to get — and we talk about it all the time,” General Manager Brett Veach said, via Sweeney. “Left tackles don’t typically become free when free agency starts, and sometimes it takes one of these scenarios — an injury or something out of the ordinary — for a guy like this to fall.

“He was in that weird landing space because prior to the injury, he would have been in that number count, but there was a little, ‘OK, there is going to be a rehab process there.’ But he was certainly a guy that made sense for us.”