Arizona Cardinals Wish They Didn't Draft Isaiah Simmons

If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be? Hopefully your answer is to change a draft pick that the Arizona Cardinals made and butchered.

Bleacher Report's Matt Holder decided to redraft every franchise's worst draft pick over the last five years -- the 2024 class to the 2020 class.

In those classes , the Cardinals made the following selections:
2020: Linebacker Isaiah Simmons (8th overall)
2021: Linebacker Zaven Collins (16th overall
2022: N/A
2023: Offensive Tackle Paris Johnson Jr (6th overall)
2024: Wide Receiver Marvin Harrison Jr (4th overall | Defensive Lineman Darius Robinson (27th overall)

Simmons, Collins, and Robinson are the only true options. However, Collins is still with the team, and Robinson is only in his second season. That makes Simmons the odd man out, and Holder agrees.

Arizona Cardinals Wish They Didn't Draft Isaiah Simmons

Holder made Simmons his target to change and said this on the original selection:

"It’s understandable what the Cardinals were thinking when they took Simmons with a top-10 draft pick. The NFL had become a passing league in which big college safeties were routinely converted into linebackers.

"However, the Clemson product ended up not having a natural position in the league and was eventually traded for a seventh-round pick."

It fits to a tee. Simmons was considered to be a "freak" coming out of Clemson with the ability to play both linebacker and safety. He was a classic Steve Keim pick considering how much he loved playing defenders out of positions (i.e. Collins, Deone Bucannon) with varying results.

Not only was Simmons a miss for that trend, but he was one of the biggest misses of the Keim era.

To fix the selection, Holder took another defender, but this one playing in the secondary: AJ Terrell.

"At the time, cornerback wasn’t a big need since Arizona had Patrick Peterson and Byron Murphy Jr. on the roster. But 2020 ended up being Peterson’s last season with the Cardinals, so adding an All-Pro-caliber corner like Terrell would have been a good investment.

"The position is one of the team’s current needs/weaknesses, so this would have been a better long-term solution in the desert."

Terrell is a fine player -- he would certainly be the team's top cornerback from then until now. However, I have to disagree with Holder here.

There were several players who the Cardinals were likely considering that make more sense to me here. The two biggest names are wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs. Lamb played college ball with Kyler Murray and has become one of the three-best receivers in the league. Wirfs shares that status as one of the best left tackles in football.

Lamb was taken 17th overall by the Dallas Cowboys; Wirfs was picked 13th by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If you really want to feel bad you can add Justin Jefferson, the 22nd overall pick to the Minnesota Vikings.

Any of those three, and obviously a slew of other players, would've been much better than Simmons. I stand firm on Wirfs and Lamb most considering strong links to the team at the time, but Jefferson would also have been brilliant, albeit with hindsight.

But one thing that Holder nailed was drafting for a future need and not reaching for the all-world athlete. Those three players would have genuinely changed the direction of this franchise... It's a fun exercise, but this one hurts more than others.

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