Hello Panthers fans! Congratulations on your recent acquisition of free agent tackle Rasheed Walker.<\/p>\n
As exciting as this time is, you\u2019re no doubt wondering what kind of player, exactly, your team has just signed, and I\u2019m here to help as much as I can. Here\u2019s a brief overview of Walker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Packers, quite frankly, struck gold with Walker. After a moderately decorated career as a long-time starter at Penn State (he was voted to two third-team All-Big Ten teams by the media and two honorable mentions by coaches), Walker slid to the seventh round of the 2022 NFL Draft over concerns about his athleticism.<\/p>\n
The Packers essentially redshirted Walker for his rookie season (he appeared in just one game and only played four snaps), but things changed in a big way in 2023. David Bakhtiari\u2019s triumphant return to the field after years of knee troubles ended after just one game, and the Packers turned to Walker as their new starting left tackle.<\/p>\n
He was shaky at first, leading to an in-season position battle with long-time swing tackle Yosh Nijman, but Walker eventually prevailed, and was the Packers\u2019 starter down the stretch in 2023 and into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The next spring, though, the Packers spent a first round pick on left tackle Jordan Morgan, presumably setting up another position battle for Walker, but the Packers were confident enough in his play that Morgan never really got a crack at the job. Walker remained the starter throughout 2024, then won a position battle with Morgan outright in 2025.<\/p>\n
In total, Walker gave the Packers more than 3,000 snaps at tackle (counting playoffs) over his final three seasons, and I think you\u2019ll agree that\u2019s a pretty tremendous value for a seventh round pick. And, somewhat hilariously, he now presumably will take the spot vacated by Yosh Nijman\u2019s departure and ultimate retirement.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s he like as a player?<\/p>\n
The good: Walker is a reliable, adequate starting tackle<\/p>\n
For starters, one of Walker\u2019s best attributes is his availability. He has appeared in every game over the past three seasons and has only appeared on the final injury report for a given game twice: once with a knee injury in 2024 and once with a quad injury in 2025. He was questionable for both games, but played in both. Maybe it comes with the size (he\u2019s 6-foot-6 and 324 pounds), but he\u2019s always been a durable, reliable player for the Packers.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s a decent pass blocker, too. It\u2019s one thing to be healthy, it\u2019s another thing to actually do things with that health, and for the most part, Walker has. Make no mistake, he\u2019s never been a Pro Bowl-caliber tackle, but he acquits himself well. In his three seasons as a starter (or partial starter) in Green Bay, Walker ranked 22nd, 19th, and 35th as a pass blocker among players who lined up for at least 500 regular season snaps according to Pro Football Focus. Not elite numbers, to be sure, but certainly adequate. You can do a lot worse.<\/p>\n
The bad: Walker\u2019s size is a bit of a mirage<\/p>\n
On the flip side, Walker is not the mauler you might expect as someone with his physical dimensions. He simply isn\u2019t the road grader he should be for someone who\u2019s bigger than almost every defensive lineman out there.<\/p>\n
As good as his pass-blocking grades are, his run-blocking grades are proportionally unimpressive. In the same data set as before, Walker ranked just 47th, 57th, and 54th as a run blocker among comparable tackles. It\u2019s been a legitimate struggle at times for the Packers to run behind him. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d go so far as to call him a liability in the run game, and pass blocking is certainly more important in the modern NFL, but it\u2019s certainly not one of the better parts of his game.<\/p>\n
He will also give up penalties and sacks with a fair bit of regularity. Over the past three seasons, Walker has surrendered 14 sacks and has been penalized 27 times. There\u2019s some nuance to those numbers; not every sack was Walker\u2019s fault and not every penalty was a drive killer. But that\u2019s still quite a pile of negative plays.<\/p>\n
The bottom line: Walker is an adequate starting tackle who should be consistently available over the life of his contract<\/p>\n
Overall, Walker may not wow you as a player, but he\u2019ll be a decent starting tackle. You will have to cover for some of his weaknesses, and you\u2019ll have to accept some negative plays, but you\u2019ve got a good one here, or at the very least an adequate one. You also have the benefit of not having overpaid for him: nobody had a worse time than Rasheed Walker in free agency this spring<\/a>. For now, you\u2019ve at least solved your left tackle position for a couple of years. He may not be a premium option, but you didn\u2019t pay a premium price. The Panthers can always move on in a year at no cost at all, but if Walker turns out to be a revelation, you\u2019ll also have no reservations about signing him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hello Panthers fans! Congratulations on your recent acquisition of free agent tackle Rasheed Walker. As exciting as this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,2702,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-810609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-news","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116224292611254721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}