Chiefs trainer explains why Josh Simmons is going on IR: 'Just not there yet'

All right, so I want to talk about Josh Simmons and give you a little timeline here. On August 17th, Josh came to me with calf discomfort and feeling that he couldn't post on a single leg in training camp practices. This was the same leg that he had knee surgery on in 2024. He was evaluated by our physicians who thankfully suspected a low back injury instead of a lower leg or knee ailment. So we obtained an MRI in St. Joe that confirmed that he had a bulging herniated disc in his lumbar spine that disc problem was higher up than what we normally see in our offensive line which complicated the the case um we recommended a second opinion as we always do with all of our injured guys um and through his agent and Josh they selected a spine specialist in California that we have used previously and it is uh really well known in the NFL he went there was evaluated and the recommendation was to do rehabilitation not surgery uh with the intent that we would do an MRI in the future in the near future to see what that disc looked like so Josh continued to progress and to repeat MRI a few weeks later showed that the disc had improved so no surgery was recommended and rehab would continue throughout this process we've had frequent communication with the second opinion uh with our doctors and Josh and his agent Josh worked his tail off he worked diligently with my staff every day and has improved to the point where he returned to practice in a limited capacity last week however we feel that he's plateaued in the rehab process as he's trying to get to the final steps of recovery with return to competition and he's just not there yet um after discussion with Josh yesterday. We gave him some time to talk with his family and his representatives to investigate next steps as he goes through this process. And that's why he was listed yesterday as both personal and with a back injury as we determined these next steps. And he took the day off to get with his people. It was decided and agreed upon by everybody, his people, his agent, him, myself, Andy Beach, that he should be placed on IR to give him more time to return to full function. He'll continue with the rehab process with the goal of returning to play at the high level that he achieved in the past. I give a lot of credit to Josh, my docs, my physicians, and my staff. I just give them a ton of credit for navigating through this injury to the point where surgery is not recommended and that he just needs more time to return to full function.