ORCHARD PARK, NY — He is a goliath of a human. Officially listed at 6 feet, 7 3/8 inches tall and 330 pounds, he plays triple his size, engulfing players whole. His ankles are skinny — like those of an Olympic sprinter — and his cleats are designed for players at skill positions.
Every so often, a physical specimen appears to reside from a different planet in this sport.
A cheat code we all created back on Madden 64 as kids. Fictitious.
That’s Deone Walker.
Yet, there’s always been one unknown: What’s burning inside? People in Kentucky questioned his desire. Even people here with the Buffalo Bills weren’t quite sure initially if Walker possessed the required Hulk-smash switch in such a violent profession. He’s a “bumbling giant” through these hallways at One Bills Drive, one coach begins. “Smile on his face, daps you up,” senior defensive assistant Jason Rebrovich continues. “He doesn’t have that visual like, ‘I’m going to break your damn jaw!’ But when he plays and you see it?”
Rebrovich pauses.
“I feel it every day because I’m usually his blocking dummy.”
One day last season, Rebrovich had a “heart-to-heart” conversation with Walker. Coachspeak for blunt rhetoric required with most rookies. He was on him. Into practice, players dispersed into individual drills. Rebrovich lined up to absorb Walker’s blow.
“And he let me know,” Rebrovich says, “that ‘If I want to break your damn neck, I’m going to break your damn neck.’ I went airborne.”
Indeed, Walker quite literally uprooted his coach, launching him skyward.
The father of three crashed… hard.
To this day, his shoulder aches.
“All part of worker’s comp,” he jokes.
Walker? Bring this story up and he only smiles. The perpetrator doesn’t remember exactly what his coach said. Only that it pissed him off. Only that he can be moody and let anger course through his veins. Rebrovich is certain there’s video footage of the incident hidden in an office somewhere. He’s lucky. NFL offensive linemen have their posterization plastered across social media weekly. One by one, they’re humiliated.
These highlight reels have become football crack. Walker makes a mockery of grown men.
Take this mash-up with north of a million views. He karate-chops a helpless Alijah Vera-Tucker right into Drake Maye’s face on one rep and head-fakes past him on another. He trashes 330-pound Aireontae Ersery into a dumpster and slams a Houston running back into the turf. He rips past Detroit’s Juice Scruggs to two-hand launch Jared Goff. Swallows poor TreVeyon Henderson. Swim-moves multiple linemen with such ease you’d think they’re stationary blocking pads. Punks arguably the best lineman in the sport: Penei Sewell.
Through four weeks, his 19 pressures ranked second amongst defensive tackles and his 15 hurries were first. He has four batted balls, a sack and three TFLs.
His performance leaves viewers a combination of aghast, bewildered and, perhaps, a little scared because nothing about this 22-year-old makes any sense.
Everyone tries. Back when he was the associate head coach at Kentucky, Vince Marrow recruited Walker out of Cass Tech in Detroit, Mich. The kid already had an 84-inch wingspan. The word he used then is the same word he uses now: “Deone is a monster,” Marrow says. “I’m telling you — he’s a monster. He hasn’t even been all the way unleashed yet.”
Bills general manager Brandon Beane is understandably excited about this ceiling.
“Very few guys walking on the planet look like him,” Beane says. “The sky’s the limit.”
Up front — on this Bills D-Line — teammates witness stunts they’ve never seen before. Mention Deone Walker and their eyes widen.
From DeWayne Carter…
“The unicorn. In this sport, a lot of things add up. That one does not. One plus one equals five. The dude’s a beast.”
To Greg Rousseau…
“It’s like watching a Hall of Famer. This is an All Pro, Hall of Fame level. It’s crazy.”
None of this is bluster. Walker has the attention of the entire football world.
One month into this season, he is one of the league’s greatest mysteries.
So, let’s catch a unicorn. How is this possible? Where is this going? If we are to believe our eyes, four games in, Buffalo has a supernatural talent blooming on defense. Granted, this reconfigured unit is off to a rocky start. Slowing down the Los Angeles Rams on Monday Night Football is a steep task for this struggling secondary. Walker, however, may be the wrecking ball Buffalo has been missing to finally close its championship gap.
Fresh off a lively game of cornhole in the locker room, Walker takes a seat.
Initially, the unicorn cannot explain unicorn. Genetics are not much of a factor. Both of his parents are short. Walker has an uncle who’s 6-5, but that’s about it. Nor is Walker ever stricken with an overwhelming desire to personally take over.
“I just play football,” Walker says. “That’s literally it. I feel like basketball helped me a lot with me being nimble, being able to move, but I don’t really think I’m doing anything too crazy until we get into the film room. It’s just football in the moment.
“It’s ‘we need to stop.’ The Bills do such a great job shifting our mentality to where I don’t care about what I do. I’m only doing what I’ve got to do on the field because I don’t want to mess things up for you, mess things up for my brother. That camaraderie, that brotherhood. It’s not even about me no more. It’s about us.”
Walker distills the mystery to its simplest explanation.
He’s long. He can move. He’s dumbfounded himself.
Walker admits he laughs at the destruction during Monday film sessions.
He most certainly was not laughing on April 24-26, 2025.
To solve this mystery, the best place to start is with his nonsensical fall in the NFL Draft.
After first claiming that he doesn’t think about falling into the fourth round, Walker alerts our attention to a tattoo on his shoulder. Right there in ink is one number.
109.
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Question No. 1: How did this guy fall to Pick No. 109?
He left a trail of aching bodies in his wake. When Deone Walker thinks back to his 2023 season in Lexington, two plays from two contours of the field spring to mind. First, the play vs. Florida when he dropped into zone coverage. Walker demolished tight end Arlis Boardingham and the ball popped into the sky for an interception. Next, the play vs. Louisville. As Jack Plummer released the ball, Walker drilled the quarterback into the turf.
Plummer reacted as if he was hit by a bus.
Says Walker: “I had them rolling around.”
This is what’s most perplexing.
Discovering Walker did not require an ATV trip into seasonal logging trails or ferry rides to remote islands. His dominance was broadcast at the highest level of college football. He owned SEC linemen with regularity throughout this sophomore season, totaling 55 tackles (12.5 for loss) with 7.5 sacks in all. Once that season was complete, Marrow viewed his D-Tackle as a surefire top-5 pick. “The dude,” he adds, “was a terror.”
He was firmly on the Bills’ radar, too. On the cusp of each college season, Beane asks his scouts to rank the top players in their area. Walker’s name was near the top of the list. And when he took a look at Walker’s film for the first time, he couldn’t help but utter: “Holy shit.” The Bills gave him a first-round grade into the fall of 2024. Beane saw Walker play in-person for the first time when the Wildcats faced Ole Miss on Sept. 28.
His size, again, was stunning. Holy cow, Beane told himself, that dude’s fucking huge.
Between the whistles, however, all disruption waned. He wasn’t nearly as productive as a junior.
His sack total plummeted to 1.5. All GMs and scouts had no choice but to question everything that drew them to Walker in the first place.
“Is he coasting? Is he taking a year off?” Beane recalls asking. “Is he just trying to get to the NFL without hurting himself? All that stuff. And then you find out at the end of the season he was playing with a back injury. So it was like, ‘All right, we’ll give him some credit.’ But then it’s still like: ‘Was somebody covering for him?’”
Teams closely examined Walker’s medical testing at the NFL Combine and his story checked out.
So, something’s still fishy. The demand for giants half as quick is immense. Back or no back, it’s bonkers that Walker would free-fall into the fourth round. Look closer and it’s clear this scouting process was a bit more convoluted. In truth, you can’t even blame NFL GMs, scouts and college directors. Too many jobs are at stake. It’s the duty of scouts to investigate, to relentlessly uncover the good, bad and ugly. Not easy when many college coaches go full Dabo Swinney and wax poetic about every player going pro.
Marrow, now at Louisville, served as an NFL liaison in Kentucky. He doesn’t want to throw specific coaches under the bus but notes that many of the visiting personnel men told him that people inside Kentucky’s building were ripping Walker as “lazy.”
He bites his tongue.
“Deone knows the truth,” Marrow says. “I know the truth. His family knows the truth. It’s just a bunch of bullshit, to be quite honest.”
Walker doesn’t flinch. Head coach Mark Stoops was a strong advocate and the defensive tackle was cool with the entire ’23 staff. Liam Coen, the current Jaguars head coach, was the Wildcats’ OC that season. They had a strong bond.
The ’24 offensive staff, coordinated by Bush Hamdan, was a different story.
“Some people on our staff didn’t really like me,” Walker says. “They didn’t like me because of my back problem. It hurt to see me not play to what I could be. So they were mad. ‘Oh, why?’ They don’t know. What offensive coach asks trainers about a defensive player?”
Of note: Hamdan is now the Miami Dolphins quarterbacks coach. Walker gets to see him twice this season.
Nor was this some nebulous back issue. Walker suffered a pars defect, a crack in the thin strip of bone connecting lower and upper joints of a vertebrae. It’s most common in teens and heals on its own. Walker simply experienced his fracture at the worst time.
“People didn’t really know,” Walker adds. “It was hard, but I still wanted to go out and do what I could for the team at UK. Will I take anything back? No.”
Marrow tried to spread the gospel. Told everyone who’d listen that Walker was going to be a star.
Once this kid could focus on football — and football only — there was hell to pay, he’d say.
These Bills heard all opinions from all sides and decided to investigate further by bringing Walker in as one of their 30 in-person visits ahead of the draft. The medical staff told Beane they wouldn’t clear him until training camp to be safe. He’d need a lot of physical therapy. And on this visit, the Bills were extremely impressed with Walker’s football IQ. He was more soft-spoken than expected. “He doesn’t come across as a gritty guy,” Beane says. “And so sometimes you go: ‘Is this guy gritty enough to play? This is a grown man’s game.’”
Point blank, the Bills grilled him: Do you love ball? What does this mean to you? What do you want to do this for?
“We challenged him,” Beane says. “You want to see how he’s going to respond. And it’s not just sitting in a room for 20 minutes. It’s in different ways all day and watching film and pressing him: ‘What do you want to be?’”
The Bills talked to the ex-Kentucky running back on their roster. Ray Davis, a man who knows grit, offered a strong vote of support. They also liked that Walker actively chose to play in the Senior Bowl down in Mobile, Ala. Prospects hunt for excuses all the time to skip all-star games. If Walker was willing to compete when an NFL doctor would not have cleared him, he must love the sport.
Coaches did their own research. Rebrovich started with the ’24 tape, wondered “What does he do well?” and reverse-engineered back to that ’23 tape. It was like watching a completely different player. Right then, he knew the talent was inside of Walker. The fight. The hunger. He looked forward to somehow pulling it back out of him.
As late April closed in, Walker earned a prime spot on the team’s board.
Buffalo selected South Carolina defensive tackle TJ Sanders 41st overall in the second round and Marrow texted one Bills scout: “Deone’s better than him. This kid will be a monster.” Day 2 of the draft ended and, upon seeing that Walker was still available, the Bills phoned the Chicago Bears to climb from No. 132 to No. 109.
All weekend, Walker held a draft party in Lexington with plenty of family in from Detroit. The mood was a blend of confusion and excitement. Everyone expected Walker to go earlier. Hearing 108 names called before his own absolutely stung.
But as his name finally flashed across the screen, Walker tried to keep perspective.
“It doesn’t define who you are,” Walker says. “It doesn’t define what you’ve got to do.”
Shortly after, Marrow pulled him aside. “The knock on you was, ‘You were lazy,’” he told Walker. “Enjoy this. But get your ass in shape and prove everybody wrong.’” When Walker reported to work with the Bills, coaches did not detect any animosity over his plunge. Rather, they saw a player determined to do exactly what Marrow instructed.
There’s no massive chip on his shoulder — only that tattoo.
Question No. 2: How does a man standing 6-foot 7 3/8 inches, 330 pounds move like this?
The simplest explanation is basketball. He played his junior and senior years of high school.
Basketball, not football, was his first love.
As a fan, Walker was into Kevin Durant and LeBron James and especially “Prime D-Rose.” He was drawn to the ridiculous explosion of this Chicago Bulls point guard before all his knee issues. And as a player, Walker grew up on the post before evolving into more of a Jokic-like “facilitator” at the top of the key.
Quick feet were a necessity.
Quick feet stood out to everyone when Walker first took the practice field as a rookie for the Bills at St. John Fisher University. During 1 on 1’s, Beane watched his footwork. The largest player on the field was also one of the nimblest. This was no stiff. “He’s got basketball feet,” Beane adds. As that first camp wound down, two vets on the Bills’ offensive line — David Edwards and Connor McGovern — made a point to tell the GM that when “96” figures it out, he’s going to be a major problem.
“And that’s where you’re just like, ‘All right, he’s got it. Now we just got to keep him motivated, keep him going, get him some confidence,’” Beane says. “I think he lost some confidence in being pumped up (in college) and then the next year didn’t go well and you fall. You see all these guys picked ahead of you.”
Rousseau, a physical marvel in his own right, was immediately entranced by Walker’s stature. “The way he moves? It’s crazy,” he says. “Somebody his size shouldn’t move like that.” Carter can’t get over one freaky blend of gifts. “Skinny ankles, he says, “but strong as an ox.” Marrow, after calling Walker “twitchy like a damn linebacker,” directs our attention to his 10 5/8-inch hands. (“He strikes you. He can maneuver you. He can bull rush you. He can give you a 1-2 punch and go around you.”) Those hands are the reason why he believes Walker could’ve excelled at tight end or offensive tackle, too.
During this first pro season, Rebrovich conducted those blunt conversations with Walker.
Walker assured his coach he wanted to chase greatness. OK, great. Are you OK being coached hard? Walker nodded and proceeded to change both his body and mentality. Buffalo’s strength and conditioning staff crafted a detailed regimen that first year together.
“We just had to have a heart-to-heart and say, ‘Hey, what are your goals? What do you want to do? Let me help you to help us,’” Rebrovich says. “And he really took that to heart.”
Year 1 was full of ups and downs. This dancing bear leapt into a big play occasionally.
Then, came the test: the offseason.
When the Bills reported back to work in April, Walker had clearly utilized the previous 2 ½ months.
“He didn’t just go to an island and chill out,” Beane says. “You could tell he worked.”
When OTAs/minicamp wrapped up, Walker didn’t lag. He kept the intensity cranked to a 10. Specifically, he targeted his kryptonite: a tendency to play too high. When Go Long sat down with Aaron Brewer last summer, the Miami Dolphins All-Pro said at one point that he enjoys blocking players like Walker who stand straight up. An extension of how scouts described him to our Bob McGinn in his draft series. Too often, Walker allowed offensive linemen to get underneath him.
Here, Walker doesn’t disagree. He admits he played too high.
While a low center of gravity is literally impossible for the 6-7 Walker, he’s now playing to his advantage. Rebrovich likes to use a visual analogy. Imagine a “big brother” keeping a “little brother” at bay with his arms down and away, he’ll say. Walker can keep linemen away with his inherent length.
“The most sacred thing is your jersey number,” Rebrovich says. “You don’t want anybody to impede it. Some of these guys have these big, huge chains with their numbers on it. So why do you have it? It’s obviously sacred to you. When you’re on the field, you’ve got to protect it. He does a great job of making sure people are not impeding his inner circle.”
He’s not losing his joy for the sport, either.
This fuels all on-field carnage as much as anything.
Walker cites a recent conversation with Bills rookie TJ Parker. The two agreed that they must pour everything into football for as long as they possibly can. Walker doesn’t want to live with any regrets down the road. To this end, it’s crucial to maintain a genuine zest for the sport. Never will he treat this as a 9-to-5 obligation. Morphing from good to great, to him, is rooted in preserving this passion.
“I just love football. It’s weird. I love playing football,” Walker says. “The main thing that gives rookies the Rookie Wall is thinking, ‘Football is my job. Ugh. It’s Year 1, but I’m a rookie. It’s my job. It’s not a game no more.’ Football is still fun!”
Sneaking in an hour of video games can help. A quick escape.
He’ll veer his mind away from the sport and — by the time he returns? — he feels totally re-energized.
“Because football takes a lot out of you,” Walker adds. It takes everything out of you.”
A voice in the background of the locker room echoes: “I agree with that!”
Year 2 has been quite a payoff.
He’s huge. He’s disruptive. But it’s everything we don’t see that triggers this all into action.
Question No. 3: What is his superpower?
Home opener. Detroit Lions in town. Bruce Smith offering the hey-ey-ey prayer into a mic.
The Buffalo Bills’ first game at new Highmark Stadium offered three hours’ worth of wild sights and sounds.
Nothing, however, was crazier than seeing what Deone Walker did to Penei Sewell.
The same Samoan nightmare who once concussed a teammate so badly as a youth that the poor sap transferred to another school, the same 6-5, 335-pounder who told us he’d die on the field for his teammates was whisked away by No. 96 on Thursday Night Football. This was a “pull-slide” technique sharpened with Rebrovich. Walker got the left tackle to redistribute his weight and rocked him to sleep.
It can seem as if Walker operates as more of deranged crocodile, if that croc crushed two cans of the original Four Loko. No plan, all terror. But as Walker details, none of this is an accident. He’s not guessing. Heading into Week 2, Walker knew the Lions did not communicate well on the offensive line.
“They’ve never really played together,” he explains. “They were all newly announced starters, so there were a lot of miscommunication problems. Their center — whenever it was a pass — he likes to point out the ‘Mike’ before he gets in the stance. So just trying to pick on that. It’s a little quick thing to see: ‘OK, he pointed that way. He pointed toward the three.’ Now, I can backdoor the guard because I’m thinking it’s a pass.
“Little stuff like that. Things you can only get by watching him.”
Rebrovich’s description of effective defensive line play is dead-on.
He likens the job to deer leaping in front of you down a country road.
Am I hitting it? Am I swerving? Or am I slamming on the brakes?
“And you have to make that decision now,” Rebrovich explains. “He’s very, very reactive. When things flash, he’s got a great vision and a great feel for blocking schemes and protections within that scheme of what we’re trying to accomplish. You can see the product is growing and it’s going to continue to grow.”
Walker and Rebrovich are on a 24/7 hunt for solutions, engaging in lively discussion during meetings, talking/texting afterhours and, of course, communicating nonstop on gamedays. Walker’s ability to adapt belies his age.
Adds Walker: “Football isn’t about thinking about what you’ve got to do. It’s about reacting to what somebody did to you. That’s 95 percent of defense. The extra five percent is hard work.”
Walker could be eight feet tall, 500 pounds with the lightest feet imaginable. Nothing physical about him would mean a damn thing if he hesitated — if he was confused at all — when that proverbial 12-point buck jolts out of the brush. The defensive tackles who own this millisecond forever own the edge.
That’s why Walker cites another analogy.
Walker views his 50 snaps a game as a heavyweight boxing fight. Round to round, he gains a feel for his adversary. He’ll throw a jab… then a hook… then a cross… and catalog how a lineman blocks him, essentially setting the bait for those viral haymakers. He knows precisely when to shift a lineman’s weight the wrong direction.
“The mental part, for me, is what really helped me take off,” Walker says. “Within the film room, being able to break down players and break down teams, formations and being able to see what the offense is trying to do. Our coaches do a great job of making cut-ups for us to be able to jot down notes while we’re watching: ‘OK, 65, he’s a leaner, a two-hand puncher. OK, 90, he’s a wider puncher, low hands.’ It may seem so little — but fourth quarter, at the end of the game — people are going to go to their tendencies.”
And there’s our best answer to this Deone Walker mystery.
We’re all enamored by what freaks of nature can do physically.
“But” Walker adds, “it’s about who can think the clearest while going through physical pain.”
That’s why Rebrovich doesn’t hesitate when asked for a comparable in the NFL.
He points to the ageless Calais Campbell. The assistant coach had him in Jacksonville for four seasons. Campbell is also a mountain of a man at 6-8, 307 pounds, but Rebrovich cites the ultra-cerebral nature of both players. They win with their minds. He’s also starting to see Walker demand more out of teammates, too. Like Campbell.
All of the plays that don’t make the social-media rounds are equally impressive to Rebrovich.
Take his ability to sniff out screen plays. In Week 1, on second and 10 from the Texans’ 40-yard line, Walker had a notion. He told defensive tackle Ed Oliver in the huddle that he’d cover the screen pass so Oliver could rush freely. On cue, the Texans attempted a screen to running back Woody Marks and Walker blew it up. The fact that center Evan Brown was hanging all over him? Minor detail. Irrelevant.
Rousseau laughs out loud thinking of Brown hanging on for dear life.
“Treats the guy like a little kid. Deone’s just like, ‘Excuse me,’” Rousseau says. “Usually people call out like, ‘Watch the screen here!’ and nothing happens. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard somebody say, ‘Watch the screen here,’ and they make the play in the screen. Because you’ve got to think. Just because you know the screen’s coming, they’re still going to try to block you. It doesn’t mean you’re going to make the play. He said it. He made the play. We’re like, ‘Bro, you’re insane.’”
This was no outlier. His tape’s full of high-effort, high-energy footage.
The man whose job is to challenge Walker daily cannot help but dream of everything still to come.
“It’s fun to watch,” Rebrovich says, “believe me.”
Even when this same player’s delivering shoulder pain for life.
Question No. 4: Is he nasty enough?
On the hunt for trained killers along the line of scrimmage, all teams must straddle a fine line. A clean rap sheet is ideal, but scouts are not recruiting librarians and veterinarians.
GMs need rabid competitors with bad intentions.
No team should realize this more than the Buffalo Bills. After each playoff loss since 2019, Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott were asked variations of the same question: How can you affect the quarterback in January?
After an AFC Championship defeat in Kansas City to close the 2024 season, Beane lamented the reality that it’s extremely hard to find A-level talents on the defensive line while picking at the end of the first round each year. “We’re not ever picking in the top five, 10,” said Beane, vowing to turn over every stone. In the same breath, the GM admitted the Shaq-like Chris Jones was a second-round pick. Thus, it was possible. It takes a special scouting eye and a touch of risk to find a player capable of destroying a playoff game.
In Walker, the Bills might’ve finally found their Patrick Mahomes antidote.
Of course, the best at his position morph into goblins. Aaron Donald’s career is littered with cheap shots. Jones trash-talks with the best of ‘em. Jalen Carter smacked Mahomes upside the head in the Super Bowl. To the extreme, of course, is Ndamukong Suh stomping a cleat into an opponent’s leg.
Good luck extracting any malice out of Walker whatsoever. We tried.
He’s downright friendly.
Those around Walker every day assure there’s venom to his game. Marrow calls him a “gentle giant” and a “gentleman” who transforms into that “monster.”
Rebrovich agrees.
“He does have that,” Rebrovich says. “He just might not personality-wise be like that around people because he’s a very people-oriented person. Confidence goes a long way in everything we do. He’s one of those players that you can coach him hard, be on him, but he understands where it’s coming from.”
Adds Rousseau: “He’s a normal dude. Kind of like me. You don’t have to be a mean person to be a baller. You just have to know how to play football. He knows how to play ball.”
Question No. 5: What is Deone Walker’s ceiling?
He’s got a “Deone shoulder” and he also has a “Marcell shoulder.”
As in, Marcell Dareus.
Jason Rebrovich coached the latter in both Buffalo and Jacksonville and, yes, suffered the painful consequences. The last defensive lineman to ragdoll opponents ‘round here with such silly dominance was Dareus. Size. Speed. Explosion. The NFL world was abuzz over this D-Tackle, too. Unfortunately, the fourth overall pick in the 2011 draft was never able to fully maximize his potential.
A rapid rise was followed with an equally rapid fall after inking a $96 million contract.
What should not get lost in time, however, is everything Dareus endured in his personal life. Football players are not humanoids, as Walker alluded to earlier. You need an escape. You also need structure. An emotional Dareus once opened up to me about his tumultuous life off the field — everyone close to him kept dying. He lacked the off-field foundation required to thrive in this cutthroat profession.
Rebrovich still talks to Dareus all the time. He’s doing well.
Rebrovich also cites Walker’s foundation as a strength.
To be sure, Walker does not sound the least bit complacent, insisting multiple times the only thing he cares about is Buffalo going 1-0 each week. Teammates may be talking Canton. As his star rises, Walker is making a conscious effort to avoid all hype around his name.
“I don’t care,” Walker says. “That’s all politics anyway. The same people that praise you on the Internet — when you get too engulfed in it and you have a bad game — now they’re the ones bashing you. So why would I put any energy into it?”
Sage life advice for all.
He doesn’t want to change anything that’d detour his current trajectory. The more mayhem he creates, the better this Bills defense will be when it matters most. It’s a unit working through growing pains. A defense that has embraced a bend-don’t-break life since 2017 now wants to attack offenses. Rousseau loves defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard’s scheme. No longer will the Bills sit back and invite 15-play drives. He calls it “boom or bust,” adding that it’s their job to supply the boom in the form of sacks and turnovers. Buffalo (correctly) wants the ball back in Josh Allen’s hands as much as possible.
The pressure’s on this defensive front to collapse the pocket.
Especially against elite quarterbacks like the reigning MVP they’ll face tonight.
Especially come playoff time.
From afar, Marrow is still telling everyone who’ll listen that Walker is on the cusp of greatness. He sees a 10+ year career, $200 million in earnings, endless big plays. He stayed in close contact with sharp Bills personnel man Pete Harris throughout the entire process, sending text after text after text. A few weeks ago, Harris offered a token of gratitude for his insistence — he was right. And, hey, Marrow himself was selected by the Bills in the 11th round of the 1992 draft. The longtime coach knows the city’s dying for a championship.
“This,” Marrow promises, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”
True, as Beane notes, Walker is not even fully grown as a man yet.
They view him as an “arrow up” player with a limitless future at a premium position.
Era to era, Beane believes one NFL fact holds true: hell-raising pass rushers up front win games. Philadelphia emasculated Mahomes. Seattle harassed Maye. Neither game was a revelation. With the Carolina Panthers, Beane saw what a dangerous pass rush can do to offenses en route to Super Bowl appearances in 2003 and 2015. This summer, he was able to catch up with Julius Peppers in Canton. The GM took a picture with Peppers and joked that nobody can take him out of the Hall of Fame if he still had some snaps in him.
Peppers the freakiest athlete Beane has ever seen in this sport.
Walker is extraterrestrial in his own right.
“He has answered the bell,” the GM says. “He’s so football smart and understands how people are trying to block him. But he’s still young. There’s still a lot of room to grow. You don’t want to get overexcited because you want to take one day at a time and keep pushing him and see where we can go.”
Buffalo hopes this is only the beginning.
Peppers a great comparison, given the basketball lineage. People forget how solid Peppers was as a UNC basketball player, as well as football. Here's one future NFL player lobbing to another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozI51Uquwo