One of the more pressing decisions of the 2026 offseason is what to do with Quay Walker. Having just finished his fourth season as part of the Green Bay Packers, he will now hit unrestricted free agency. Do the Packers want to bring him back? Should they want to bring him back? How much would he even cost? Let’s work through all parts of this Quay Walker conundrum together.
Let’s start with his level of play. How good has Quay Walker been?
While Quay may have his struggles, there are some things he’s always done incredibly well. Chief among those would be his natural athleticism and sideline to sideline speed. If anybody remembers watching the 2021 NFC championship game, the players of the game that day were linebackers Devin White and Lavonte David for Tampa Bay. They made it near impossible for the Packers to get anything going on the boundaries whether it was stretch plays or even wide receiver screens.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Packers drafted Quay just 3 months after losing to such a dominant performance from 2 highly rangy linebackers.
This play is simple, but it’s an example of the type of play they just couldn’t get going on that day in 2021. Since being drafted this is something that Quay has always been good at. You can see here that he doesn’t even take that great of an angle, but he just looks and feels so much faster than the RB on this play, that it doesn’t even matter.
The big part of the conundrum is that Quay’s run defense doesn’t always look this good. Over the years, but especially in his first two seasons while playing under Joe Barry, Quay was really hard for me to watch as a run defender. Even against more simple inside zone runs, Walker took himself out of the play way too often by just attacking the wrong gap.
Quay played a very indecisive brand of football early on. He rarely attacked gaps downhill, but when he did he often guessed wrong on which gap the running back would actually take. It’s definitely a cat and mouse game since the running backs are often reading the linebackers on zone runs, but it’s one that Quay has struggled with, especially earlier in his career.
While Quay has become a bit more consistent since working under Jeff Hafley, some of the same deficiencies in his game still remain. This play is an example. You’d love to see Quay get to the play side and provide some sort of resistance here.
People like to peddle the idea that Jeff Hafley fixed Quay Walker, but I’m not so sure how true that is. Quay was freed up to make splash plays more often, but the deeper run defense numbers are still pretty concerning for Quay.
In 2025, Quay Walker had a run defense grade of 54.4. That ranked 51st out of 59 qualifying linebackers. Yikes. I thought that 2024 was Quay’s best season as a Green Bay Packer, but even in that season Quay’s run defense grade was only 35th out of 50 qualifying linebackers. So, even at his very best he has not even been an average run defending linebacker.
Now let’s talk about Quay in pass coverage. To me, this is where he has struggled the most throughout his career.
Linebacker is a really tough position to play when in coverage. Having to be an integral run defender while also having to show awareness for passing threats isn’t easy. The explosion of under center passing and the play action game makes this even harder for the modern linebacker.
That being said, there are some parts of defending the pass that should be rather rudimentary. This play is an example of that. You can’t see from this screen angle, but the Packers are in a pretty basic Cover 2 spot drop zone look on this play. This left Quay Walker and Edgerrin Cooper defending the 2 hook zones in the middle of the field. This receiver was clearly trying to target the gap between the 2 zones, and Quay/Cooper miscommunicated on who was supposed to take said receiver. Leads to an easy completion on a big 3rd down.
This singular play wouldn’t be such a huge issue if it weren’t for the fact that this happens all the time! I would bet you could pick out at least one play like this from almost every game this season.
Once again, the numbers back up my feelings that Quay Walker has largely struggled in coverage, especially in zone coverage.
Quay surrendered almost 700 passing yards last season, which was the 5th most given up by any linebacker in 2025. He also had a 122.9 passer rating against him which was good for 4th worst in the entire NFL. Not great…
PFF would also agree on this topic. Quay’s coverage grade ranked 42nd out of 49 qualifying linebackers this year. They specifically dinged him in zone coverage, with a coverage grade of just 41.1. This was 3rd worst among qualifying linebackers.
That zone coverage grade is one I would really keep in mind for Quay. If that was his grade while playing in Hafley’s scheme that utilizes lots of cover 2 looks that are traditionally easier on linebackers, then I would be worried how he might look in Gannon’s scheme. Gannon runs more quarters and penny looks that put linebackers on more of an island and require them to cover more ground.
So, now that we’ve got a good feel for who Quay is at this point. Let’s talk about how much he might cost the Packers.
The Green Bay Packers turned down Quay’s 5th year option last year, and that option would have paid him roughly 15 million had they picked it up. To me, this indicates that the Packers don’t see Quay being worth any contract that pays him in the 15 million range.
There have only been a few linebackers who recently got paid above this number. Tremaine Edmunds, Zach Baun, Jamien Sherwood and Nick Bolton are all earning in the 15-20 million/year range.
Then there’s a much bigger list of guys earning in the 10-15 range. This involves guys like Dre Greenlaw who signed for 10.5 million coming off an achilles tear. This is more where I expect to see the Quay Walker market to settle.
While that is my expectation, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Quay’s number creep more towards 15 million. There’s not very many free agent linebackers on the market right now, and the continued cap explosion in the NFL sets Quay up well to truly cash in.
As a premier athlete and a former first round pick, someone is going to be willing to pay him. I just deep down hope it is not the Green Bay Packers.
If that does end up being the case with his contract, I would expect that the Packers would pass on extending Quay Walker. The cap space is going to be tight this offseason. This means they absolutely can’t waste any money on underperforming players like they did last season in Aaron Banks and Nate Hobbs.
While it’s no easy decision, I do feel I’ve made the case that Quay Walker can and probably should be replaced. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find somebody who can at least replicate this exact level of play, and that player should cost a whole lot less than 10-15 million dollars.
If I were the GM, I would let Quay walk, enjoy the comp pick in 2027, and try to replace Quay with either Ty’ron Hopper, a cheaper free agent, or a draft pick. Like I said, I don’t think it would be that hard.
