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Packers tackle Rasheed Walker knee injury nearly derailed NFL career

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GREEN BAY – For four weeks, Rasheed Walker grinded his right knee into an unusable joint, the pain so overwhelming he no longer could support his own weight.

He splintered the bone deeper with each snap, a month of grueling blocks and willing himself back to the huddle for one more play, until the bone was dying. There were small fissures sprouting like roots of a tree. In time, the microfractures merged into an OCD lesion, cutting off his blood supply.

Walker remembers the moment his pain became so debilitating he no longer could remain on the field. He had been a rising left tackle at Penn State, anointed with a bright NFL future. Even more, Walker was a team captain, and team captains don’t lead from the sideline. It was going to take something unimaginable to prevent him from returning to that huddle.

Then he woke up one day and could barely leave his bed.

“It started off as something small,” Walker says. “So I kept playing on it. It kept on getting worse and worse in small increments until one day I woke up and couldn’t even walk. That’s when I called it quits.”

When doctors saw the OCD lesion on an MRI, they presented Walker an impossible choice. Their recommendation was surgery, drilling a hole in his knee to insert rods for support. It meant a minimum of one year away from the field. No guarantee he’d play again. “The return-to-play rate,” Walker says, “was low.” On the other hand, blood no longer was circulating to the joint, and without it any hopes of recovery without surgery were presented as a fairytale. It was possible his knee could recirculate its blood supply with enough time and rest, but healing naturally was a long shot. Like restarting a car without gasoline.

A future in football was unlikely whether Walker had surgery or not. He chose the lesser-invasive recovery, breaking the tie between two bad options. Walker declared for the NFL draft as a redshirt junior after the 2021 season, knee wrecked, not knowing if he ever would play again, deciding to forego his final year of college eligibility.

Two years later, he is sitting at his locker inside Lambeau Field, iPad resting on his lap after a sweltering practice, entering his second season as the Green Bay Packers starting left tackle. He is something of a football miracle, a seventh-round draft pick holding down the blindside, one of the game’s most important – and highest-paying – positions. He inherited the coveted spot from David Bakhtiari. Like Jordan Love a year ago, Walker is stuck in the intense spotlight only replacing a franchise icon can illuminate.

The miracle isn’t lost on Walker as he sets his iPad aside to share what these past two years were like. Walker’s unlikely path goes beyond his transformation from the 249th pick to one of the most important players on a Super Bowl-contending team.

More than anything, he’s happy the doctors were wrong.

‘Something was wrong’

The seventh round is misleading. If not for a bum knee, Walker never would have sniffed the final 15 picks in 2022.

Brian Gutekunst remembers scouting his left tackle before the draft. The size. The athleticism. The footwork. In Walker, Gutekunst saw the complete package for an NFL starter.

He just needed two healthy knees.

“That’s why he fell,” Gutekunst says, standing off to the side of Ray Nitschke Field, one day before his team departs for a preseason trip to Denver.

A consensus four-star prospect out of Waldorf, Maryland, an hour south of Washington D.C., Walker didn’t take long to find the field at Penn State. He played four games as a true freshman in 2018, the maximum allowed to retain his redshirt. Walker started 32 games at left tackle over the next three seasons, locking down the blindside.

By the time he was a redshirt junior, Walker had determined it would be his final college season. He was dominant in the Big Ten, a 6-foot-6, 324-pound specimen with rare athleticism. “He’s always had left tackle feet,” Gutekunst says. Walker had the mobility to finish blocks in space. He was rarely off balance. And he was massive.

Midway through 2021, Penn State traveled to Iowa. Walker loaded up to make an open-field block. The boulder-sized tackle puts it a little more colorfully. “I was going to slam someone,” Walker says. As he approached, his foot caught in the turf. His knee popped. The dreaded noncontact injury.

“I knew immediately,” Walker says. “Something was wrong.”

The pain shot waves through his body, but Walker took his designation as team captain with the gravity it deserved. Even more, his quarterback was gutting through broken ribs. Sean Clifford, now backing up Packers quarterback Jordan Love, was Penn State’s starter all three seasons with Walker. In late 2021, Clifford barely was staying on the field himself, fighting through the pain.

His big left tackle wasn’t about to abandon the quarterback.

Penn State had a bye week after Iowa. Clifford and Walker discussed their injuries each day, updating each other after every medical check. Clifford remembers Walker peppering him with assurances.

“I just remember him talking to me about it,” Clifford says, “and him saying, ‘Hey, if you’re out there, I want to be out there.’ And that’s the type of guy he is. He’s literally putting tape out there that he knows is going to go to the NFL, and it might not be his best. But he wants to be out there for his guys. It goes back to when I started with him the first time, all the way to our last game together. He’s always wanted to have the opportunity to protect me.”

From the beginning, Walker’s knee puzzled doctors. Their initial advice, Walker says, was that no further damage could be done. Playing on his knee was only a matter of pain tolerance. When Penn State returned from the bye, it hosted Illinois. Walker spent the entire week on the sideline at practice, not taking a single rep. His coaches requested Walker let his backup shadow him throughout the week, preparing him for the game.

By kickoff, Walker had second thoughts about playing. His knee didn’t feel right. Assurances be damned. “I told them, ‘I don’t feel comfortable playing,’” Walker says. “I don’t want to play.” But coaches never were going to let the backup on the field. Each game in college football is too valuable. Walker says he was encouraged to at least try.

He started against Illinois and played every snap. It was an epic dual lasting nine overtimes, the most in college football history. A living hell on Walker’s knee.

Penn State lost by a field goal.

“I’m blocking,” Walker says, “it’s like around halftime. My (expletive) starts feeling like I’m limping. I go to my coach, tell him, ‘Coach, I don’t know if I can go anymore.’ He goes, ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ And he just walks away.

“I had to play the whole game. Nine overtimes. All that just to lose in nine overtimes. I was mad as (expletive).”

Walker lasted three more games before waking up one morning unable to walk. He got a second MRI on his knee, and the results showed it had indeed gotten worse. The OCD lesion ended his season. Walker missed Penn State’s final three games, including the Outback Bowl.

Then he was presented with the impossible decision. Surgery, or no surgery. An unlikely football career either way. Walker heard what the doctors were saying.

He just refused to believe them.

“It just never made sense to me,” Walker says. “Because me myself, I knew I wasn’t done playing football. They would tell me, and it really just did not add up to me. I’m very self-body aware, so I would kind of feel it making progress, but the MRI said otherwise. So it did not make sense to me.”

‘I lived to see another day’

In his first NFL training camp, Walker lugged his right leg around the practice field. He was limping. The pain was impossible to shake. Walker still didn’t know whether he could play after being selected near the end of the draft.

He missed the Packers preseason opener against the San Francisco 49ers. Then he missed the next week against the New Orleans Saints. At best, it appeared he was heading for the practice squad.

The Packers relented in their preseason finale against the Kansas City Chiefs. Walker lined up at right tackle, a position he hadn’t played since high school. For 50 snaps, he played his way onto the 53-man roster, a surprise given how little he’d done in training camp.

“I wasn’t losing my reps,” Walker says. “I was still limping, winning. Just muscle memory kicked in. I guess it helped me that I wasn’t kicking on my bad leg. I was kicking on my other leg. But it just worked out for me.

“Ever since then, every opportunity I had, I just went hard.”

The pain would visit him intermittently throughout his rookie season, but it faded as the fall of 2022 progressed. Walker lived in the training room, finding a routine that could keep him on the field. He rebuilt his quad muscle after going so long without bearing weight. He got regular massages to alleviate the soreness. Any regression in his knee, he knew, could cost him his career. “As long as I could do my job,” Walker says, “I lived to see another day.” Constant maintenance after workouts to keep the swelling down.

Walker didn’t play a single snap as a rookie. He was active for only one game, a Christmas Day trip to the Miami Dolphins. Walker played just four special teams reps. He didn’t see the field again in 2022.

“I give ‘Sheedo a lot of credit now,” Gutekunst says. “He has busted his tail to get where he is. He was a young player coming out of Penn State, and his first year all the talent, you could see. It was just a matter of, it’s going to take him a minute to get to where he wants to be.”

Gutekunst says he watched Walker learn how to become a pro. His knee maintenance was part of his progression. If Walker was going to have an NFL career, he had no choice but to make the right decisions for his body, checking every box to stay healthy. On the field, coach Matt LaFleur says, Walker dug into “all the little details” at his position.

Walker became a student of the game. He honed his footwork. He committed to studying film. After practice, Walker can often be seen sitting at his locker, watching clips on his iPad. It’s given him a better feel for how edge defenders will rush him.

“’Sheed’s a guy,” LaFleur says, “he loves ball. He puts in the work, and he does it all offseason. I think he truly loves the process. He grinds at it. I think that he’s starting to pick up the detail that really starts to separate some of the players in this league.”

When last season started, Walker’s knee no longer was in pain. “It’s a nonfactor now,” Walker says. “It just stopped hurting.” He remained an afterthought in the Packers offense. Bakhtiari started Week 1 in Chicago, playing 55 snaps. He didn’t allow a sack. Afterward, in the Soldier Field visiting locker room, Bakhtiari crowed about not needing practice to play at an elite level. He was right. It appeared Bakhtiari was finally over the knee situation that jeopardized his career.

Then the fluid in Bakhtiari’s knee built up again. He was unable to play when the Packers traveled to Atlanta the following week. The Packers placed Bakhtiari on injured reserve before the end of September. Walker didn’t know it leaving Chicago, but the opportunity to forge a career had arrived, courtesy of a knee injury.

‘He never really blinked’

The nerves were intense early in Walker’s first NFL start. On the initial third down against the Falcons last season, Walker flinched. False start. Five-yard penalty. A third-and-7 was now third-and-12.

On the next third down, linebacker Kaden Elliss lined up across him. Walker kicked out wide to his left, opening a gaping lane for Elliss to rush quarterback Jordan Love untouched. It might’ve been the easiest sack in NFL history.

Walker needed time adjusting to life as an NFL starter. By Week 8, the coaching staff had enough of his inconsistencies. Late in the first quarter, Minnesota Vikings edge rusher DJ Wonnum beat Walker with an outside speed move, sacking Love on second down. Walker didn’t even make it to the sideline bench.

“It was just like, ‘You’re benched,’” Walker said. “Apparently, they were sick and tired of my (expletive).”

Even now, Walker remembers the play vividly. Wonnum rushed from a wide nine technique. Running back AJ Dillon was supposed to chip on the play, but offered little resistance. By the time Wonnum reached Walker, he had a full head of steam. “There’s really not much I can do about that,” Walker says. He threw a punch, but it felt like trying to stop a locomotive chugging downhill. Walker was stuck on the tracks.

The benching sent a message. Jogging off the field, Walker expected to be in the huddle for the Packers next possession. He got the quick hook instead.

“Being benched after that,” Walker says, “that showed me, like, these folks really ain’t playing. This (expletive) for real. This (expletive) is grown-man business. So I never really want to, I try my best not to take my foot off the gas. Especially the O-line, it’s like a next-man-up mentality. If you get comfortable, somebody is going to start working harder than you and take your spot. That’s how I look at it.”

Over the next two months, Walker split snaps with Yosh Nijman. Slowly, the rotation started to fade late last season. Walker played every snap in the final three games as the Packers made a stretch run to a playoff berth. He didn’t leave the field once during the postseason, playing all 123 snaps against the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers.

Watch the Packers’ signature highlights late last season, and Walker is playing a key role. When Love connected with Jayden Reed for a 33-yard touchdown down the middle in Minnesota, giving the Packers an early 10-0 lead with a playoff berth on the line, Walker picked up a blitz against safety Harrison Smith. When Love found Dontayvion Wicks for a 20-yard touchdown against the Dallas Cowboys, giving the Packers a 21-0 lead in the NFC wild-card game, Walker was in position to assist left guard Elgton Jenkins on a double-team block. A week later, it was Walker who had the key block to spring Aaron Jones for a 53-yard run against the San Francisco 49ers, sealing linebacker Dre Greenlaw on the left edge.

“I think he solidified himself out there,” Love says. “Made a name for himself. And really done exactly what you want to do, is come in and just control what you can control when you get thrown into the fire.”

Walker allowed only one sack after Week 15, none in the playoffs. Love’s blindside was secure. Just the way Clifford’s was at Penn State.

A seventh-round pick isn’t supposed to do what Walker has done. But that’s the misnomer in Walker’s journey. He’s only a seventh-rounder because of the knee injury that almost ended his career before it began.

“I was surprised he went seventh round,” Clifford says. “I think everybody at Penn State was. His athletic ability is through the roof. Just the way that he’s able to center his body, be able to move very quickly and agile, to make plays when you think he couldn’t capture a guy on the edge, he just does a phenomenal job of doing that.

“He’s very balanced. He’s very strong. And he’s also just a baller. He’s a football player at the end of the day. So it might be a little unconventional sometimes, but he’s just really, really solid when it comes to getting the job done.”

When training camp opened last month, the Packers’ left tackle position was considered open for competition. Walker ensured that was never happening. On two healthy knees, he’s held the starting job since camp’s opening day, taking no serious threat. Still, he remains uncomfortable. A couple of days before Denver, Walker flinched. Another false start.

Sitting at his locker after practice, Walker still was upset with himself about the penalty.

“Usually when I get the protection,” Walker says, “I start walking out of the huddle. It’s a bad habit. So I was just ready to go. It looks bad on me. Because I don’t want people to think, ‘Damn, ‘Sheed might jump.’ I don’t want there to be no question marks under my name.”

The lesson from last season’s benching lingers with him. Walker doesn’t want to give coaches a reason to be tired of his (expletive) again. He’s in the spotlight now. He knows the starting left tackle can determine the success of a season.

He also knows it took a measure of luck to get here. One knee injury that healed. Another that didn’t. Walker has his shot now, replacing a legend.

“He never really blinked from the time we got him,” Gutekunst said. “He’s really turning into a pro and handling all those things. He had this (knee issue) for a long time and played through it and continued to do so. So knock on wood that that’s the case, but he will do everything in his power to be a good player and be out there every Sunday.”

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