Acme Packing Company
Brian Gutekunst has spent a hefty bit of cash and draft capital at linebacker. Will it finally make a difference?
As the Packers’ general manager, Brian Gutekunst has a lot of ongoing projects.
His most successful one — last year’s renovation of the safety room — bore incredible fruit last year and figures to be at least as good this year.
His most ambitious one — the continual work he’s done on the Packers’ wide receiver corps in the wake of Davante Adams’ departure — is entering its most high-stakes phase. You might have heard the Packers took a wide receiver in the first round of the draft this spring for the first time since before at least a few of their players were born.
But simmering along with those and other projects is Guteunst’s enduring fascination with the Packers’ linebackers. Since the Packers fell into an All-Pro season from De’Vondre Campbell in 2021, Gutekunst has poured resources into his linebacker group. After Campbell’s great year, Gutekunst rewarded his new star with an expensive new contract, and has since added a first round pick (Quay Walker), a second round pick (Edgerrin Cooper), and a third round pick (Ty’Ron Hopper) to the mix, a spending extravaganza at a position typically considered an fairly low priority.
Setting aside the question of whether or not this is a good idea, here’s a more relevant one: will the Packers’ linebackers actually be good this year?
For one player, the answer seems to be obvious. Edgerrin Cooper, now bulked up heading into his second season, is the Packers’ best prospect at linebacker. He earned an All-Pro vote last year and would have been a serious contender for Defensive Rookie of the Year had he not been brought along slowly at the start of the season then missed a few games due to injury. As it stood, he still got some league-wide attention by winning Defensive Rookie of the Month for December/January. If there’s one player you can get legitimately excited about at linebacker, it’s Cooper.
But it’s much more of a mixed bag beyond the second-year man out of Texas A&M. 2022 first round pick Quay Walker seems likely to get a contract extension at some point, but he’s been a liability as much as an asset in his still-young career. He’s still got rare physical attributes, but he has yet to put it all together and it’s a fair question at this point whether or not he will.
Ty’Ron Hopper took a similar step down the same path last year. Despite being a top 100 pick (91st overall in 2024), Hopper barely saw the field. Most of his work came on special teams last season, and he didn’t make much of a splash there. Like Walker, his physical attributes are intriguing, but he’s closer to the outside looking in than the center of the defensive picture at this point.
After that trio, the resource investment thins out a little bit. Reclamation project Isaiah Simmons...
