What are the Raiders getting in linebacker Quay Walker?

EAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY - NOVEMBER 16: Quay Walker #7 of the Green Bay Packers runs downfield during an NFL football game against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium on November 16, 2025 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Hello Raiders fans! Congratulations on your recent acquisition of free agent linebacker Quay Walker.

As exciting as this time is, you're no doubt wondering what kind of player, exactly, your team has just signed, and I'm here to help as much as I can. Here's a brief overview of Walker's career, what he brings to your team, and what you might want to watch out for as your newly signed free agent takes the field in a new uniform.

More or less, the Packers spent the 2022 offseason turning Davante Adams into Quay Walker and Christian Watson. That's not a 100% accurate representation of how it went down, but it's pretty much the case. The Packers took those two players with the two picks (plus another one they used to trade up in Watson's case) they got from the Raiders for Adams, and have enjoyed pretty good results from the move.

Both have gone through some growing pains, but both ended up in a good place in 2025.

Walker took a circuitous route to get there. Until this past season, his best year was probably 2022, when he got to play sidekick to a fading De'Vondre Campbell in the second year defensive coordinator Joe Barry's tenure in Green Bay. Walker made a bunch of plays on the ball that year, recording career highs in passes defensed (7) and fumbles forced (3).

2022 also showed us one of Walker's biggest downsides: sometimes he doesn't think before he acts. He got himself booted from two games in 2022. The first was for a sideline altercation against the Buffalo Bills, while the second was for shoving an athletic trainer who was attempting to tend to an injured Detroit Lions player. In the grand scheme of NFL player misbehavior, both situations were pretty small potatoes, but they certainly didn't paint Walker in a positive light.

He opened 2023 with a bang, returning an interception 37 yards for a touchdown in the Packers' Week 1 win over the Chicago Bears, but the rest of the season was a disappointment. He regressed more or less across the board.

2024 was better. Under new defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley (and well-regarded linebackers coach Anthony Campanile, now the defensive coordinator for the Jaguars), Walker improved but battled injuries. He appeared in a career-low 13 games as he dealt with a concussion and an ankle injury.

But he bounced back in 2025. Though he still missed three games (technically two, since the Packers rested a bunch of guys in Week 18, Walker among them), he recorded a career high 128 tackles and got after the quarterback enough to log a career high seven QB hits.

The good: Walker is a phenomenal athlete who provides sideline-to-sideline run defense

Even if it was only in 14 games, we still got to see some of Walker's best attributes last season. One thing has always been true of him: he's a marvelous athlete. He posted a 9.63 Relative Athletic Score at the 2022 NFL Combine, highlighted by his 4.52-second 40-yard dash at nearly 6-foot-4 and 241 pounds. And it wasn't just straight-line speed, either. Walker performed well in the agility drills. He really is just a remarkable all-around athletic tester.

And it shows up on the field, too. He can chase ballcarriers down wherever they hide, ranging across the defense with ease to pile up tackles. He hits hard when he gets there, too, and is generally a sure tackler. His missed tackle rate has been in the single digits each of the last three years (he was at 10.1% as a rookie in 2022), according to Pro Football Focus, including a career-best 6.7% in 2025. Newly acquired Packers linebacker Zaire Franklin, for comparison, hasn't been below 11.6% in any of the past four seasons.

Walker also excels as a blitzer; he's had 2.5 sacks in each of the last three seasons, and added 1.5 as a rookie. He'd have done even more damage if defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley had been willing to turn him loose more, but Hafley prefers a much more conservative style from his linebackers, generally speaking. Still, Walker was more than capable of getting the job done when he rushed.

The bad: Walker is a liability in coverage and can be slow to diagnose

Walker does have limitations in his game, the biggest of which is this: he really can't cover anybody.

But wait," you say. Isn't he huge and athletic? Shouldn't he be a maniac in coverage?"

You'd think, and you're not wrong to do so! And yet!

Despite his prodigious athleticism, Walker can be victimized in coverage. I do not fully understand why this is, but he can be beat, and is beat fairly often. He's surrendered a triple-digit passer rating in coverage in two of the last three seasons, and just isn't the eraser of tight ends that you'd expect from someone with his build and athletic gifts.

Additionally, though he is on balance a good run defender, he can be a bit slow to diagnose and can resort to guessing in the ground game. This is not a consistent problem for him, but it does pop up from time to time. He's certainly improved in this part of his game over his time in Green Bay.

There's also the reality that he's done some really dumb things on the field in the past, as I described above. I don't think his past actions are really terribly relevant to where he is as a player today (outside of the odd poorly timed penalty, there haven't been any issues comparable to what we saw his rookie season, as I wrote about above), but it's a part of his story and should at least be noted.

The bottom line: Walker has his limitations, but he's a starting-caliber linebacker who offers plus athleticism and solid run defense

But despite whatever shortcomings he may have, Walker is still a good add. Despite what his overall PFF grades might say, he's an above-average starting linebacker. Maybe not a lot above average, but you can do a lot worse than a big, athletic thumper in the middle of your defense.

Walker can wear the green dot helmet and direct your defense, and he'll run fast and hit hard with the best of him. If you can gameplan around his coverage liabilities, you've got yourself a good linebacker.