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Justin Simmons the football player remains in a state of limbo.
Simmons the person looked right at home Saturday morning in Montbello.
The 31-year-old, released by the Broncos after eight seasons back in March, has seen his free agency now inch toward the three-month mark.
You wouldn’t have known it at the Denver Broncos Boys & Girls Club for the annual March for Peace on this sun-splashed morning.
“God is so good. I’m so thankful for this time and for his faithfulness in terms of slowing me down and not taking things for granted,” Simmons said in his first public comments since his Broncos tenure ended this spring. “This offseason has been such a blessing. I’ve had a tremendous opportunity in my eyes to regain some lost moments of hanging out with family, I’ve got to go to my daughter’s dance recitals and I’ve got to see them grow and I’ve got to be home a lot more. All while training and staying ready so I don’t have to get ready.
“One door closes and another opens and that’ll open at some point here in the future.”
The two-time Pro Bowl safety didn’t want to talk much about football or about his future prospects with a pair of reporters on hand, but he readily acknowledged a piece of symmetry that borders perhaps on poetic.
The organizers of this event, Nashara Ellerbee and Naja’Ray West, are graduating seniors and off to Colorado State University in the fall. It’s a time of change in their lives. A time of excitement but also anxiousness. When you’ve made the impact they’ve made on a community, you don’t know quite what’s coming behind you, but if you’ve made your mark well, you can have confidence that it’s something good.
That’s Simmons, too. He doesn’t know where he’ll be playing next year just yet, but he knows he’s enjoying this offseason. He knows he finds himself feeling every bit as rooted here among the familiar faces and folks who perhaps once saw him as a football player but now just see him as justin.
“Honestly, even now in this time of transition, I’ve talked to them because they’re both getting ready to go off to college and we’re talking about next steps and who’s roommates and classes and what are we going to do here and when do we get to visit family?” he said. “And I’m talking them through it from my experience in college. But similarly I’m taking the same step just with another team at some point. And so it’ll be the same thing, right? New locker room, new coaches, wanting to fit in, wanting to establish yourself with your play. So we’re both in this thing almost together in different aspects. I’m looking to them for encouragement and they’re encouraging me and I hope I’m doing a good job encouraging them.
“They’ve just been a huge blessing. I love their heart, I love their passion for people and their community and that’s what I’ve learned the most from them is just how impactful you can be just by loving on people.”
It’s one more way in which West, Ellerbee and Simmons have drawn from each other over several years worth of their respective lives and development.
“I’ve learned so much, even the intentionality that they’ve put into trying to help their own hometown, backyard,” Simmons said. “For me, you’re so plugged into trying to help as many people as you can. And I think Nashara and Ray Ray have done a good job of putting into perspective for me as, like, helping the people that you’ve done life with. That’s super important. Never lose sight of that. I think it’s great if you want to help as many people as you can and inspire as many people as you can, but you never want to forget the community and the people that helped you along the way and helped raised you and helped grow with you.”
Simmons, of course, is a Florida native. He went to college at Boston College. Now he’s been in Denver since 2016. The past several years, this has been his community.
“This is our brother at the end of the day,” West said of Simmons. “Regardless of where we end up and they end up, where he ends up on a new team, we’re family. We’re always going to have each other. When he comes to this event he comes not as a football player but as himself. Justin Simmons the guy that we know. Not the Denver Broncos safety.
Added Ellerbee, “I just know that he’s going to be there for us. He goes to our graduations, both of our senior nights. He’s just a guy we can count on if we need anything.”
As the pair addressed the crowd just before the run through Montbello started, they waved Simmons to the front to stand with them. He did for a minute and helped get the group’s attention, but then ceded all of the talking to West and Ellerbee.
He watched from the side and nodded along as they talked about their confidence in the future of the event despite their departures and about how much the community means to them.
“They’ve helped me so much,” Simmons said. “I’m looking forward to seeing this last hoo-rah, but also looking forward to seeing what the kids in the future here do to continue on Ray Ray and Nashara’s legacy.”
The same could be said of he and the Broncos.
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