Packers first-round draft pick Quay Walker already feeling 'whole lot of pressure'
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Quay Walker arrived in Green Bay this summer with a label hanging over his head. A label guys work their whole lives for, sacrifice and toil for, one that most wear as a badge of honor … but one that Walker instead feared of weighing him down.
“As much as I try to say it's not (pressure), it really is,” Walker said.
“I want to say I try not to think of it because I know a lot of people like to say I was a first-round pick, and of course I was, but at the same time I just tried to put myself in guys’ shoes, like I come in here every day and just try to work like I’m undrafted.”
To be a first-round draft pick meant that so much of what the Georgia native had worked toward had paid off. He’d been rewarded for his talent and production with the distinction of being one of the best in the 2022 NFL draft class. The Green Bay Packers picked him No. 22 overall with plans to duplicate De'Vondre Campbell’s success and create a ferocious linebacker corps.
NFL NEWSLETTER: Sign up now for exclusive content sent to your inbox
LAMARK JACKSON: 'I Need $' photos not message to Ravens
“Every defensive coordinator would love to have two guys that can really run and do the things that the guys that we have can do now, with Quay and Dre,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said following the 2022 NFL draft. “There’s an ability now for us to stay in base and nickel in certain situations that maybe we haven’t had.
“It’s been a while since we’ve been able to stay in certain packages with two inside ‘backers and handle everything in run defense and the passing game. This really gives our defense a ton of flexibility.”
Walker doesn’t begrudge the opportunity, or even the expectations. Those have defined his life. But the pressure that comes with being known as the Packers’ first overall pick is real and it can an unbalanced feeling for someone looking to still find their feet.
“Much as I want to deny the fact that I am a first-round pick and it's not pressure with it, it’s a whole lot that comes with it,” Walker said. “Because I got to be on my A-game, I feel like every day, to be honest with you, and that's everybody in here, but that’s a whole lot of pressure that comes with it.
“Everybody coaches me hard. Everybody gets treated the same here, but I just don't want to be treated any different because I'm the first-round pick.”
Packers inside linebackers coach Kirk Olivadotti understands the necessity of coaching Walker in this way and allowing time for the rookie.
“We're at the baby steps of this whole thing and figuring everything out,” Olivadotti said. “We obviously have a plan. You don't take somebody at that pick (without a plan), but we'll see. We'll see how the whole thing works out.
“(Walker’s) just come in and just been the way that he is, just looking to work and trying to get things done and trying to figure things out. He's trying to get things to slow down on him. I think he will probably tell you that right now. He's got things going pretty quick right now.”
Walker, along with Devonte Wyatt, the pick at No. 28 and his teammate with the Georgia Bulldogs, arrived for rookie minicamp and OTAs coming off a national championship as part of arguably the greatest college football defense of all time. But even the best college team isn’t an NFL team, and the lessons hit Walker in the face right away.
“It's pretty different, like the way that we do base here, coming from college to here,” he said. “So I had to get used to that transition. That was it, just changing that transition. It was just like technique wise, stuff like that, things that I was kind of doing. I was doing it right, but it was almost, I was doing it right and wrong. I just got to do it in a different way.”
The biggest example of this was when dropping into coverage. Years of “spot dropping,” as Walker explains it, had created a habit. When Aaron Rodgers arrived for three days of minicamp, he took no mercy on the rookie. Any pressure that was on Walker was amplified when Rodgers tested him right away.
“That's the first thing he did,” Walker said about Rodgers looking him off. “So everybody was always talking about that, but I didn't quite witness it for myself. So the first day he got here, he did that in a walk-through and made it look easy. So that kind of caught me off guard.”
When pressure percolates, it has the potential to boil over. Carrying the weight himself meant Walker was in danger of that happening before training camp even began. Luckily for the rookie, and the Packers, the Green Bay defense is stacked with those who have been in his position and have come out on the other side.
“One day I got frustrated and Rasul (Douglas) walked up to me, Darnell (Savage) walked up to me. (Eric) Stokes, everybody just came up to me, (Adrian) Amos as well, and just talked to me about how you know how I feel and stuff like that and just gave me some encouraging words and I instantly calmed down right at that moment,” Walker said.
“They don’t really know how big that was of them just by talking to me, but it was really, really big for me. So it made me calm down a little bit.”
If that moment instantly calmed Walker, everything that followed allowed him to end OTAs in a way befitting a first-round pick, with much less pressure. For starters, he began to lean on those around him more and, in doing so, found a chemistry that can be game changing.
“We can be everything, sky's the limit,” Walker said of this defense. “I think we got all the pieces that we need. Up front, front seven and on the back end. Those are really, really good guys. Just guys I can take advice from, I want to say. But overall, I think we can be as good as we want to do. As long as we put the work in, which I'm sure we're gonna do.”
And now, as the Packers prepare to return for training camp at the end of the month, Quay Walker will arrive in Green Bay as the first-round pick, with the confidence to match.
“I'm playing a lot more fast,” he said. “I want to say just getting a better feel of it and flying around a whole lot faster.
“My confidence is slowly building a day at a time.”