KANSAS CITY, Mo. — During a meandering chat a few days before Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Ariz., then-Chiefs punter Tommy Townsend somehow ended up reciting part of a Chinese proverb.

The parable starts with a farmer’s horse running away and neighbors bemoaning his bad luck.

“We’ll see,” the farmer says.

When the horse returns the next day with two others, neighbors revel in his good fortune.

“We’ll see,” the farmer says.

On it continues, back and forth, testimony to how we might not fully understand in real time the implications of events in our lives. And that things maybe aren’t always as they initially appear. And that perspective is what really matters.

That wisdom Townsend shared came to mind as I got thinking about the tale of Chiefs left tackle Josh Simmons, who a year ago on Sunday suffered a brutal non-contact injury that abruptly ended his season for Ohio State, required surgery and severely damaged his NFL draft stock.

As Simmons was being carted off at Oregon’s Autzen Stadium with what proved to be a ruptured patellar tendon in his left knee, his ambitions to be on the field for a national championship, his goal to win the Outland Trophy awarded to the nation’s best lineman and his hopes to be a top 10 pick instantly vanished.

No wonder he was devastated in the immediate aftermath.

But that self-indulgence proved fleeting.

“That day definitely, like, changed who I kind of was,” Simmons said in an interview with The Star last Saturday. “But I try not to look at it as a haunting thing, if that makes sense.”

Especially given what’s happened since.

Or at least so far.

Because if not for the injury, and Simmons’ zealous rehabbing under excellent care, he never would have fallen in the draft to a team that’s appeared in five of the last six Super Bowls and won three of them.

And the Chiefs wouldn’t have been able to pluck a player who shredded the rehab timing blueprint to stabilize the left tackle position that was their greatest vulnerability last season.

So, yes, we’ll see where it goes from here.

Entering the Chiefs’ “Sunday Night Football” matchup with the visiting Detroit Lions, though, Simmons has become entrenched as the starter at a position that couldn’t be solved with four different players in 2024.

He’s also demonstrated early promise that he could be a long-term solution in Kansas City.

“I like where he’s at,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “I think he’s in a good place.”

Nagy meant in terms of five games into Simmons’ NFL career.

But the broader point holds, too.

In great part because of how Simmons attacked the injury early on and never relented.

Still isn’t.

“I try to wear that scar,” he said, “like a badge of honor in a way.”

All the more so because nothing about the injury and rehab was easy, especially the psychological part. Going through something like that, he said, can put anyone in “a bad mental space.”

Without elaborating, he said he went through some “crazy” stuff.

To combat that in the days before the surgery, he liked to enter a cold tub to help get his mind right. He meditated and focused on breathing.

Then, following the surgery by L.A. Rams (and Dodgers) team physician Neal ElAttrache, he attacked in a way he perhaps described best while speaking with reporters at the pre-draft NFL combine in March: “wake up the demons inside you.”

As he pondered those crucial early weeks while seated at his locker the other day, Simmons smiled.

“It definitely takes, like, immediate 110 percent effort,” he said. “We were doing, like, two rehab sessions a day. I was drinking unhealthy amounts of collagen. I was doing whatever it took to get back to where I needed to be. And that’s really what it kind of takes.”

Even as he knew he was pushing himself in every conceivable way, he had no real sense of how he would be perceived in the draft.

All he could tell himself that first night was … “We’ll see what happens.”

Certainly, he managed his expectations.

Because of the injury itself and the lack of quality game tape from that season, he even thought there was a chance he wouldn’t get drafted until Day 3.

“So I was just ready for anything, and ready to take whatever,” he said, later adding, “I didn’t even care if I was undrafted; I just wanted to get a chance to prove to a team I could be good enough.”

As the top-10 talent stayed on the board with other teams clearly unwilling to take a risk, the Chiefs went from pleasantly surprised he was remaining available to nervous he may go shortly before their turn.

Informed by confidence in their own medical scrutiny of Simmons and surely inspired by need, they chose him with the 32nd overall pick after trading down with Philadelphia (and receiving a fifth-round pick for it) with an understanding the Eagles were drafting a defensive player.

Later that night, general manager Brett Veach noted the assessment of Rick Burkholder, the Chiefs’ VP of sports medicine and performance, that Simmons was “well ahead of where he should be.”

Still, questions remained. And between that and the free-agent signing of veteran offensive lineman Jaylon Moore, few would have projected Simmons to be ready and able to be starting from the first snap of training camp.

But after extending his zealous rehab with the Chiefs’ medical team, that’s exactly what happened.

“I’m excited for the future he has,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said that day.

A mere but transformative year after his future appeared in doubt to many.

Just not for long to the one person who could do something about it by not assuming the worst.

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