What is Quay Walker?
Two years into his NFL career, most of what was true about Quay Walker as a prospect seems to still be true today.
He’s still an elite athlete. The Packers have not seen the like of him at linebacker this side of Y2K. His size, speed, and movement skills are incomparable in Green Bay and rare throughout the league.
He’s still a little bit on the raw side, as he was coming out of Georgia. He wasn’t a full-time starter there until late in his career and is still feeling his way through the position at times.
He still has unique versatility. Even if he has yet to fully live up to his potential, no one on the Packers has his unique power against the run, his unique range against the pass, and his unique athleticism to rush the passer. As far as the Packers are concerned, he is a one of one defensive playmaker, and no single player can replace what he offers.
The real question, then, is why is he essentially still just the prospect version of Quay Walker? Why hasn’t he taken as much of a jump as you could reasonably expect from someone with his gifts?
Why, in short, haven’t we seen more from him?
First, there’s the very real possibility that he’s just not very good. He wouldn’t be the first draft prospect to wow a front office with his athletic gifts but fail to live up to them on the field. Just because you can run like a cheetah and leap like a gazelle doesn’t mean you can diagnose a complex blocking scheme or cover a tight end up the seam. Your great athletic gifts might just mean you make mistakes faster than everyone else.
But I think Walker’s lack of development — or maybe lack of implementation — has more to do with his former defensive coordinator than Walker’s abilities.
I am not a defensive savant. I don’t pretend to understand the exact nuances of how to get the best out of players or where to position them to maximize their impact. But based on a few of Walker’s usage numbers, that seems to put me in good company with Joe Barry.
Through two seasons, Walker’s usage is basically static. According to Pro Football Focus, lined up as a standard inside linebacker on 79.2% of his snaps in 2022 and 83.7% of his snaps in 2023. When he’s not inside, he makes a few rare cameos as an outside linebacker, but never with any kind of regularity. There were two games where Walker played double-digit snaps on the edge in 2022, but none in 2023. He never played more than nine snaps in a game on the edge and there were five games where he never lined up there at all.
And playing in the middle, Walker rarely blitzes effectively. According to Pro Football Reference, Walker blitzed 59 times in 849 regular season snaps in 2023, a rate of 6.9%. That’s higher than any of the linebackers ranked in the top 10 by Pro Football Focus (minimum 600 snaps), as shown below.
Jahlani Tavai - 6.7%
T.J. Edwards - 6.5%
Ernest Jones - 6.2%
Blake Cashman - 4.7%
Frankie Luvu - 4.6%
Fred Warner - 4.4%
Bobby Wagner - 3.8%
Demario Davis - 3.6%
C.J. Mosley - 2.8%
Quincy Williams - 2.7%
But Walker produced just five quarterback hits, two hurries, and 2.5 sacks in 2023 (on all pass rushes). Either Walker was uniquely unproductive as a pass rusher, or his blitzes were so poorly conceived that they never really had a chance to begin with.
After three years of absorbing Joe Barry’s tendencies, I’m inclined to believe the latter. Barry showed profound reluctance to lean on his players strengths, and even if the numbers show that Walker was blitzing, it’s hard to square that usage with a lack of production. And even using Walker as a blitzer is a bit of an aberration for Barry, considering how often he seemed to actively fight against what his players are best at when constructing his schemes.
Is all this shoving too much blame on Barry? Possibly, but after hearing the introductory press conference for Jeff Hafley, I can’t help but wonder. Matt LaFleur said he specifically wanted a coach who can help maximize players’ individual talents and Hafley himself said he prioritizes individual development almost above all else. It’s hard not to read an indictment of Joe Barry into those words. If we’re still wondering what Quay Walker is heading into his third season, a defensive coordinator who habitually failed to help players grow into the best version of themselves might be a big reason why.