For Lachavious Simmons’ senior season at Selma High School, the Saints moved from Class 5A Region 3 to Class 6A Region 4. That put Selma in a league with Bessemer City, Brookwood, Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa, McAdory, Northridge and Paul Bryant.

Eleven years later, Simmons will be playing in the Birmingham area again after joining the Stallions for the 2025 United Football League season.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Simmons said on Friday. “Just seeing my family out there. Put on a show for Stallion Nation. Just ready to Giddy Up.”

The Stallions’ first game in Birmingham will come against the Arlington Renegades at 7 p.m. April 11 at Protective Stadium.

The opportunity to play back home is one reason that Simmons chose to join Birmingham.

“The GM, he reached out to me,” Simmons said. “He presented an opportunity for me to get more film out to try to get back to where I want to be. It was no other place I wanted to play than Birmingham because I’ve got family still in the state of Alabama, so it was just an awesome opportunity to get back on a team in the state.”

After playing at Tennessee State, Simmons entered the NFL as a seventh-round selection of the Chicago Bears in 2020. In two seasons with the Bears, Simmons played in two games, with one start. He was with the Arizona Cardinals in 2022 and the Tennessee Titans in 2023. He’s been out of the NFL since being released from injured reserve by the Titans on Sept. 4, 2024.

“I feel like I just have unfinished business,” Simmons said. “Like, I feel like I got a lot that people really haven’t seen yet and a lot more potential to put out on the field.”

After four seasons in the NFL and a week in UFL training camp, Simmons isn’t looking down his nose at the competition in the spring league.

“The majority of these guys come from the NFL,” Simmons said, “so you can’t just put them in the category, like, they’re beneath me because if you have that attitude, you won’t succeed. So you got to treat everybody with respect and go out there and give them your all.”

That’s the kind of attitude that was cultivated in Simmons growing up on a farm in Orrville.

“It started out with my family,” Simmons said, “just raising me up as a young man with proper mannerisms and just that southern hospitality.

“And then moving on to high school with coach Leroy Miles at Selma High School. He just took me under his wing, me and a couple of other guys, and just led us down the path and tried to put us in different situations just to be professionals, like starting with the stuff we did in school, like with the grade sheets and passing them around. Just preparing us for college. And we just had a little camp in high school just to prepare us. I just feel like it led me down the path to greatness.”

The path to greatness has practically been Birmingham’s road map. The Stallions are preparing for their fourth season, and the previous three have ended with league championships – in the USFL in 2022 and 2023 and the UFL in 2024.

“We’re just working every day,” Simmons said. “We’re just trying to get better every day and just take it one game at a time. We don’t want to put no expectations on it. We know everybody’s out for us because of the past teams. But this is a new team, so we’re just trying to build something for ourselves.”

The Stallions start their season against the DC Defenders at 2 p.m. CDT March 30 at Audi Field in Washington.

Simmons is working to be ready where needed for Birmingham.

“They got me going back and forth from guard and tackle,” Simmons said. “I started out in the NFL at tackle and then transitioned to guard. It’s just best to be versatile, being able to play any position, being able to fill in. It really doesn’t matter as long as I’m on the field and can help the team be great.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.