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The Green Bay Packers roster is full of difference-makers who can make a huge impact on the 2023 NFL season. From quarterback Jordan Love to running back Aaron Jones to cornerback Jaire Alexander, Packers training camp is filled with stars. However, there is one player who could make or break this season for the team who you might not expect. And that player is middle linebacker, Quay Walker.
Quay Walker is the surprising player on the Packers roster who could make or break the 2023 NFL season
Want to have a great defense in the NFL? Just draft Georgia Bulldogs in the NFL draft!
That’s the strategy several teams have taken in the last few seasons, and it’s worked out well for a team like the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s worked in the past, too, with other schools. Before Georgia, it was Alabama defenders who turned around NFL defenses and Miami Hurricanes in the years before that.
The Packers roster features two star Bulldogs from the 2022 draft. The team took middle linebacker Quay Walker at pick No. 22 and defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt at No. 28.
Green Bay’s defense is now filled with first-round picks (because the team refuses to draft help for their QBs in Round 1, but that’s a different story for a different article). In Packers training camp right now, at least eight of the team’s top-15 defenders — Kenny Clark, Wyatt, Lukas Van Ness, Rashan Gary, Walker, Jaire Alexander, Darnell Savage, Eric Stokes — were picked in the first 32 picks of their respective drafts.
These players have had varying degrees of success in their careers, with Quay Walker putting up one of the best rookie seasons of the bunch.
Last year, the top pick on the Packers roster started 16 of 17 games and led the team in tackles with 121. That’s 19 more than the second-leading tackler, safety Adrian Amos. Walker also put up five tackles for a loss, four QB hits, 1.5 sacks, three forced fumbles, and a fumble recovery.
In short, Walker was one of, if not, the Packers’ best defenders last season. There were two problems, though.
First, Walker’s solid season didn’t translate to much Packers success on defense. Despite having this incredible collection of talent, the Green Bay D finished 15th in the league in scoring defense and 17th in yards allowed.
The bigger issue, though, was that Walker made two incredibly boneheaded plays that got him kicked out of games, with the second one costing the Packers a playoff berth.
In a Week 8 Sunday Night Football matchup vs. the Buffalo Bills, Walker inexplicably shoved a Bills practice squad player on the sidelines, earning his first ejection. The penalty allowed Buffalo to score a touchdown right before halftime to go up 21-7 and never look back.
During a Week 17 do-or-die game for a playoff berth, Walker pushed a member of the Detroit Lions training staff who was trying to attend to an injured player. That ejection and ensuing penalty set up a 1st-and-Goal from the 4-yard line, and eventually the game-winning touchdown for Detroit.
Luckily, Walker only received a fined. He wasn’t suspended for a game or more this year, despite being the first NFL player ejected from multiple games in a single season since 2000.
In Quay Walker’s rookie season, by played 846 defensive snaps. That was 82% of the time the Packers D was on the field. And for 844 of those snaps, Walker was excellent. He was a leader on the unit and a tackling machine. The former Bulldog can range from sideline to sideline and clean up anything his defensive line or secondary misses. He is exactly the type of middle linebacker that every team in the league wants to have in the center of their defense.
And for two plays, he was selfish, stupid, and out of control. Unfortunately, at the start of his second season on the Packers roster, NFL fans — and maybe even Packers fans — remember those two snaps much more vividly than the other 844.
Walker has said all the right things in Packers training camp. The LB says he’s sorry, he’s ready to move past it, that he’s working with the Packers' director of performance psychology/behavioral health clinician, Dr. Chris Carr, and even meditating.
Still, no one knows better than Walker that it will only take one play to undo all his work in the 2023 NFL season.
If Walker can be the sideline-to-sideline star LB he looked like in most of 2022, the Packers D has a chance to finally live up to its pedigree and potential. If he has another incident that leads to an ejection or even a big 15-yard penalty, things could go south quickly, both for the defense and Walker on an individual level.
