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What makes Colin Simmons a transcendent talent

On3 imageby:Ian Boyd•06/29/23•

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5-star Colin Simmons. (Billy Embody - On3)

The State Championships of Texas high school football always get considerably more eyeballs than the big regular season games or playoff battles. Texas high school football is still overwhelmingly a live event, not (yet) a primarily televised/streamed event. The State Championships do get televised though and routinely draw in a lot more viewers.

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For viewers taking in the 2022 Texas State Championships, Colin Simmons really stood out.

He was credited with 4.5 tackles, three tackles for loss, and two sacks along with two quarterback hurries. He missed credit on the box score for an early tipped pass which was intercepted by a teammate. North Shore’s offense, with their sub 6-foot-3 tackles, had absolutely zero chance against him. Mustang quarterback David Amador made 12 pass attempts and five of them ended in negative plays due to Simmons’ pass-rush.

The high profile nature of this performance helped promote Simmons as the best player in the state of Texas. His numbers on the season weren’t shabby either, he amassed 79 tackles, 33 tackles for loss, and 22.5 sacks.

As you might imagine, film review of his junior year tells as much or more of his story than Simmons’ domination on the edge against a tackle-less, run-centric team in the final, even if the North Shore win was the most important in Duncanville’s school history. Against a variety of opponents, Simmons revealed special talent.

Simmons’ path to State

Simmons drew a few interesting tests over the course of the season from teams who actually had some level of size and athleticism to throw in his path.

They opened the year against South Oak Cliff, the eventual 5A DII State Champions, and beat them 23-10. In the regular season they defeated DeSoto, who would wind up the 6A DII State Champions, 41-17. Their playoff run included several more big wins, including an interesting challenge for Simmons in the semi-finals against Prosper.

Let’s talk about those regular season matchups.

South Oak Cliff had an absolutely massive offensive line, headlined by a pair of 3-star recruits at either guard position in Brione Ramsey-Brooks, a 6-foot-5, 400-something pound behemoth, and Narado Stoker, Jr, a 6-foot-4, 290 pounder. Both committed to TCU, who’s diving headlong into the “accumulate big, wide bodies for inside zone” business under new offensive coordinator Kendal Briles.

The tackles for SOC tasked with handling Simmons were twin brothers Jaden and Jordan Rowe, both in the realm of 6-foot-3/270 pounds and both committed to Louisiana-Monroe. Their assignment was a tough one and it didn’t go particularly well.

South Oak Cliff got down early, couldn’t run the ball well enough, and had to attempt 22 passes (more if you count the sacks) and couldn’t really make anything of them. It was basically a prelude to the season finale for Duncanville against North Shore. An Edge like Simmons is really a luxury in high school ball, where dropback passing isn’t the name of the game for most schools. S.O.C. or North Shore could just run over most of their opponents with big lines and talented runners.

However, if those sorts of high school teams are forced to throw the ball repeatedly from their base spread sets, a dominant pass-rushing Edge becomes a demon from hell.

DeSoto had similar issues. The Eagles’ offense last year was pretty heavy on zone-option, often employing zone-read plays with a bubble screen on the perimeter in order to get Longhorn commits Tre Wisner and Johntay Cook the ball in space. Here’s how Duncanville handled that stress:

Simmons typically had “box it in” assignments with a 3-technique inside of him (Alex January in the first clip), which allowed him to use his speed on the edge to contain the ball. No one was testing him with quarterback keepers.

It was very common for teams to run counter at him, a problem Texas fans are familiar with after watching the play devastate their Edges in 2021, and his play against it varied from “violent wreckage” to “caught and sealed.”

As you can see in clip two, Simmons is very capable of playing with violence and forcing a counter play into a narrow window, but he wasn’t consistent about recognizing what was coming at him in order to play the role of aggressor.

He did his job well enough that DeSoto ran the ball 37 times for only 165 yards at 4.5 ypc, not good enough to avoid having to routinely throw into conservative coverages where they completed 16 of 32 passes for just 83 yards at 5.2 ypa.

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The Eagles’ tackles were a little better off against Simmons than the S.O.C. or North Shore tandems. Left tackle Ronnell McClain is a 6-foot-4, 300 pounder rated as a 81.49 recruit and currently committed to Houston, right tackle was a 6-foot-1, 310 pounder named Leon Brigham.

Against McClain you can see the hopeless mismatch in athleticism yet also the lack of polish in the junior pass-rusher to fully maximize it. McClain is absolutely lunging at him and doing everything he can to push him wide or hold him in and it was actually generally effective enough for DeSoto to get some throws off. Brigham had zero chance against a longer and considerably faster Simmons and that matchup cost them several opportunities to get a decent ball in the air.

The test against Prosper

Duncanville squashed Prosper in the semi-final, 41-0, so they weren’t as stout a test of the Panthers’ talent and quality as a football team as S.O.C, DeSoto, Westfield, or North Shore. However, the Prosper Eagles had something those teams did not, an advanced passing game anchored by long, skilled offensive tackles.

Four out of the five Prosper linemen were at least listed at 6-foot-4 or better and at left tackle they had Tyler Mercer, a 6-foot-4, 275 pound junior committed to Tulane while right tackle featured 6-foot-7, 260 pound blue chip junior Ellis Davis. Now we’re talking suburban ball with big tackles who often benefit from private coaching on the art of the kick step.

These battles were a lot more even and D-Ville occasionally lined up Simmons as an inside linebacker on passing downs so he could blitz from unpredictable angles to avoid the heads up matchups on the tackles. Yet he still won his share of exchanges.

The story of Simmons as an Edge prospect is basically one of raw explosiveness. Even when he faces more skilled guys with the size and athleticism to offer hope of containing him, Simmons’ quickness is still too great. He can bend around the corner at speed and routinely blows by even the best competition. If he couldn’t beat the Prosper boys with his initial step, he could be erased, but stopping his initial angle was tough.

He has a ways to go in order to develop some moves which can maximize that speed, some additional strength and size, and some skill and recognition against the run game. He’s also merely a junior in high school with another year at D-Ville followed by perhaps a year of college ball before he’s seeing the field regularly as a starter.

With some development against the run and in his pass-rush moves, Simmons’ ability could make him a truly rare talent at chasing down quarterbacks. Much like high school offenses, many college offenses want to run the ball when possible and aren’t well equipped to survive against an Edge of this caliber if forced to drop back and throw with the game on the line.

Texas has a chance at a special talent in 2024.

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