It’s going to be tough for the Green Bay Packers to spend on outside free agents this offseason, considering the team is currently over the cap and the Packers will need to be extremely mindful of their compensatory pick situation, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein is reporting that Green Bay is at least poking around at one position: off-ball linebacker.
Here’s what Silverstein wrote in his breakdown about the upcoming free agent decisions that the Packers have to make:
Then there’s Quay Walker. He may be as good as gone. If he gets an offer in the $11-million-or-more (per year) range, the Packers probably won’t try to match it.
The Packers reached out to agents who have linebacker clients about to hit the open market during the combine, according to one source who had business with them in Indianapolis. That indicated either they know they won’t be able to afford Walker and are moving on or are covering their bases.
[Insert a fake gasp for an NFL front offices and players’ representatives tampering during the combine.]
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I sort of already pegged Walker as someone who was going to leave the team, after Pete Dougherty of the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that Walker “strongly suggested” that the Packers and his agent were not negotiating in early January. On top of that, general manager Brian Gutekunst sort of spilled the beans on the team moving to a 3-4 defense (which was apparently also referenced in a local-press-only Q&A he had down at the combine, too), and commented that linebacker is one of the positions that the team needs to add more competition for.
You need more big bodies on the defensive line when you run a 3-4 defense, which is why, under defensive coordinator Joe Barry, who ran a 3-4, the Packers generally carried just four off-ball linebackers on their gameday roster, compared to when they typically carried five under Jeff Hafley’s 4-3 defense. Edgerrin Cooper, Isaiah McDuffie and Ty’Ron Hopper, three of the Packers’ four top linebackers in 2025, are all under cheap contracts for the 2026 season, so this was another indication that Walker is going to hit the market.
I’ve been told there’s at least some interest between former Packers linebackers coach Anthony Campanile, now the Jacksonville Jaguars’ defensive coordinator, and Walker. Jacksonville is set to lose a projected top-10 free agent in linebacker Devin Lloyd, whose camp is hoping for a deal in the $20 million per range, next week. It’s possible that Campanile, who had Walker playing the best football in his NFL career in the second half of the 2024 season, could convince his squad to save a couple of bucks and go with a slightly cheaper option (ballpark in the $10 million to $15 million range) in Walker.
For what it’s worth, here’s how the linebacker board stacked up in our last update for the consensus free agent rankings:
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Cooper is a little undersized to be a Mike linebacker, consistently playing the Will position in his two years in Green Bay. Whenever Walker left the lineup, it was actually McDuffie who stepped in Walker’s place as the green dot. Hopper is also on the smaller side, too, so he’s more of Cooper’s long-term backup than a Mike in this new scheme.
From a positional perspective, Lloyd, Walker, Demario Davis, Kaden Ellis and Bobby Wagner are Mikes, but it’s worth noting that Davis, Ellis and Wagner are below-average athletes at the position at this point in their careers. Nakobe Dean, Devin Bush, Alex Anzalone and Quincy Williams are Wills, which would be redundant with Cooper on the roster. Leo Chenal is in the mold of a 4-3 Sam, the position that McDuffie used to start at under Hafley.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Packers fill the Walker void, if they do think the answer is a free agent signing, especially if it’s a compensatory free agent who would then also offset a 2027 draft pick.
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