Josh Simmons Injury Mystery: Why Kansas City Hasn't Confirmed His Return Yet

Josh Simmons is gone from Kansas City again. This absence feels wrong. He guards the blindside for Patrick Mahomes. That job demands total reliability. Simmons gets paid millions to do it. Yet he has started only eight games in his two-year Chiefs career out of twenty.

Khali Benson stepped up recently. The undrafted rookie played right tackle at college and filled in on the left side this season. The team sits 3-0. But defenders beat him off the line almost immediately during Sunday's loss to the Dolphins. Highlights from that win show his struggles clearly. The offense needs his stability back.

No one knows when he returns or if he ever will. This silence is strange in a league where reporters track every scratch on obscure players. Why does no information exist about Simmons? We must look at 2025 to understand.

Simmons tore his patellar tendon at Ohio State in October 2024. Recovery reports said he was ahead of schedule after the season ended. The Chiefs picked him 32nd overall. A week later, he was active for rookie minicamp. ESPN's Jeremy Fowler called him a national reporter close to the Chiefs organization.

Fowler posted on X on April 24, 2025. He said the injury did not drop Simmons to that final first-round pick. The worry was not clinical at all. It concerned character more than recovery. "Several teams agree: Josh Simmons had best tape of any OT last year," Fowler wrote. "And they aren't very concerned with recovery on the torn patella tendon."

He added, "More of the concern is maturity/character. But he's going to the ideal, veteran-laden place." What exactly those character concerns were remains unclear. Still, nearly every team passed on him. They did so for a left tackle with elite tape who was cleared for contact by draft night.

For one month last season, it looked like Kansas City had won that hesitation battle. Simmons appeared to be the long-term fix for their chronic problem. That reading no longer holds true. On Oct. 6, 2025, two hours before Monday Night Football against Jacksonville, the team listed him as questionable due to illness. He played and performed well anyway.

That episode might have vanished into weekly NFL oddities if not for what happened next. After a full week of practice, Simmons did not show up for pregame duties against Detroit. Players and staff reportedly were unsure of his whereabouts. Head coach Andy Reid suggested he knew where the player was after the game.

Reid and the Chiefs offered almost no explanation afterward. Silence dominated most of his four-game absence. The organization described it only as a personal or family issue. Reporters provided little clarity over the past year about what happened or why staff apparently did not know until close to game time.

Last month, Sports Illustrated's Matt Verderame gave the first substantive report on the matter. He said Simmons left without approval the Saturday before the Lions game. There was a period where "the team didn't know where he was." That is also the version OutKick has heard but cannot independently verify. The team will not confirm, deny, or comment on the matter.

OutKick reached out to Chiefs general manager Brett Veach and agent Drew Rosenhaus before Verderame's report hit the wire, simply asking if those details held water. Neither replied. We are now sitting here in the present moment staring at a wall of silence.

After running through a full training camp, Simmons missed his first practice on Aug. 18. Immediately afterward, Verderame chimed in to say he was "fine." He wrote on X that while telling him about Josh Simmons' back injury, people were told he is okay and no one seemed worried about the second-year star.

It is now Sept. 28 and things have not improved. Simmons has missed every single practice since then. He sits out the first three games of the season despite the team claiming he walks into the building. The truth is obvious to anyone watching; he is clearly not fine.

We know Verderame's sources inside the organization are strong, so there was reason to believe the injury looked minor at that specific moment. Something shifted in the dark while we watched. On Monday, Reid gave a vague update that felt almost eerie coming from him. He told Matt Derrick of Chiefs Digest he would let reporters know when Josh returns and promised to be the first to say it. We will just see how that plays out over time.

Contrast this with his comments about safety Chamarris Connor. Like Simmons, Connor is the only other starter missing the team's first three games yet Reid sounded far more direct regarding him. He said Connor practiced last week and would get going again soon giving a decent chance for return. The difference between how they speak about these two players cannot be ignored.

Consider the coverage around other injured Chiefs players. When rookie Mansoor Delane hurt his shoulder in Week 1, Adam Schefter, Ian Rapoport, and Tom Pelissero quickly reported it was minor while keeping updates flowing throughout the week. Major networks like ESPN, Fox, NFL Network, NBC, and Amazon devote weekly pregame segments to injury news informing viewers about backup linebackers and rotational defensive backs. Yet we cannot find a single example of them discussing the status of the player tasked with protecting Patrick Mahomes.

Over the past month there has been only one national report about Simmons coming from Fowler who fittingly described the situation as mysterious. We keep circling back to that specific word because it carries so much weight here. At minimum we can establish this fact: the NFL's top reporters either do not know the story behind Simmons' absence or are choosing not to pursue it publicly.

Likewise, the Chiefs either do not know when Simmons will return or are deliberately withholding information they routinely provide about other players. That is unusual using a term. Simmons' absence has naturally invited speculation connecting it to last year's disappearance from the team. Yahoo NFL analyst Hayden Winks asked if Josh was going to miss more time than what he would have on IR which could mean missing longer than expected based on this back injury. He noted there is history of him just not being around and suggested a lot more exists in this story than what is public.

Price Carter is one of the top Chiefs film analysts who detailed the unusualness of this saga to OutKick. He said it would be difficult to describe the Josh Simmons injury timeline as normal. What started out as a routine back injury described by several reporters as a minor issue he could play if it was game week has now lingered on for the better part of two months. With no timeline for return and no corresponding roster move local media is only left with information given by the team. Andy Reid is notorious for not saying much at the podium while the team provides a very brief look at practice to reporters.

Reporters claim Simmons remains with the team, yet that offers all the news available. That guesswork makes sense. Josh Simmons is not a faceless worker in the shadows. He anchors the left side for the Kansas City Chiefs. By giving so little clarity, his own squad has invited everyone to fill in the blanks themselves.

Maybe there is a deeper reason for his disappearance. Perhaps those pre-draft character questions link directly to last year's absence and this season's too. There is history where NFL teams describe personal troubles as injuries to protect a player. The Bills did exactly that with Ed Oliver when tragedy struck.

Still, the Chiefs have made things worse by saying nothing while keeping him on the active roster. They could have moved him to injured reserve and promised a re-evaluation later in the season. They could have placed him on the non-football injury list, declared him out until further notice, and asked fans to respect his privacy.

Instead, the Chiefs have chosen ambiguity over answers. The longer this lingers without an explanation, the harder it becomes to believe this is merely a back issue. If it were only a sore spine, why the secrecy? Why the lack of reporting? Why the careful wording?

For whatever reason, the Kansas City Chiefs do not want to provide details about Josh Simmons. Speculation already swirls that he does not want to play or does not love football anymore. At this juncture, how can that not be among the possibilities coming to mind?

Right now, Kansas City owes Simmons and its fans one of two things: an honest explanation or a roster move acknowledging there is no clear path back. Apparently, the team has concluded that wild rumors about their star left tackle hurt less than the truth itself.