Former Seahawk Tharold Simon says playing his former team is ‘like any other week’

If Tharold Simon holds any bitterness about what seemed to be an abrupt departure from Seattle last month, he isn’t letting on.

Simon is now with the Arizona Cardinals and likely to see some significant action against Seattle Sunday after playing 23 snaps — his most with Arizona — on Monday against the Jets.

“He’s a really nice addition to our secondary,” Arizona coach Bruce Arians said this week. “He’s added some length and speed, and we’ve found a few packages to put him in. He’s jumped in and put his hand in the pile.”

Simon was a fifth-round pick of the Seahawks in 2013 and from the start generated hype more befitting a first-round pick — none other than Richard Sherman himself said on several occasions that Simon could be as good or better than Sherman someday.

But Simon’s Seattle career was mired by injuries, and came to a rather sudden end two days after the 2016 season opener when he was waived to make room for cornerback Neiko Thorpe (Simon had been a somewhat surprising inactive for the Miami game). Thorpe was added in part due to his ability to immediately help special teams.

In comments to Arizona reporters, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said this week of Simon that “he’s a really good cover guy. He’s really big and fast and competitive. We just had a roster situation. We just had to make a move, but unfortunately, we’re playing against him. I think he’s a really good player.”

In his own comments to Arizona reporters this week, Simon offered no bitterness about the end of his time in Seattle.

“They run a five-star program over there,” Simon was quoted as saying. “They showed me nothing but love from day one until the day I left.”

ArizonaSports.com paints a funny picture of teammates telling Simon not to lie once he gets asked questions about Seattle.

But if Simon had to bite his tongue, it apparently wasn’t all that hard.

“It’s like any other week,” he said, with the story quoting him as saying he was “trying hard not to crack a smile.” “I mean, it’s different, but I’m not going to make it bigger than what it’s supposed to be, though.”

As I wrote shortly after, the waiving of Simon also seemed to solidify the direction of Seattle’s future at cornerback. Simon would have been an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2016 season. But having fallen behind DeShawn Shead in the pecking order, he might have been unlikely to be back. Shead meanwhile, will be a restricted free agent and Seattle might opt to sign him to a longer-term deal but almost certainly will do what it takes to keep him in the fold for 2017, at the least.

While Simon will undoubtedly be excited to go up against Seattle receivers Sunday night, the same holds true for some of the Seahawks.

“Yeah, more so just because obviously because you go against him all the time in practice you don’t really get to go against these guys in a game time setting,” said Doug Baldwin. “Looking forward to seeing him again on a personal level but also being able to play against because it’s the first time I’ll be able to do that.”