Packers Positions of Need: Top 10 Inside Linebackers

The Green Bay Packers enter the offseason with a major need at inside linebacker. Here's our preliminary Top 10.

The Green Bay Packers enter the offseason with a major need at inside linebacker. The team’s top player, Blake Martinez, will be a free agent and 2018 third-round pick Oren Burks has barely seen the field on defense in his two seasons. Here is our early look at the top 10 prospects at the position. (Underclassmen are noted with an asterisk.)

Isaiah Simmons, Clemson (6-4, 230)*: As a safety in 2017, Simmons led the Tigers in snaps per tackle. He moved to a nickel/linebacker hybrid position in 2018 before moving full-time to linebacker in 2019. The payoff? He won the Butkus Award as the nation’s top linebacker. Simmons was Clemson’s first Butkus winner and sixth unanimous All-American. He led the team with 107 tackles and added eight sacks, 16 tackles for losses, three interceptions, 10 pass breakups and one forced fumble. In the process, he became the first player since Khalil Mack in 2013 to have 100-plus tackles, 16-plus tackles for losses, eight-plus sacks and multiple interceptions in a season. In three seasons, Simmons tallied 253 tackles (28.5 for losses), 10.5 sacks, 22 pass breakups, four interceptions (including one returned for a touchdown) and five forced fumbles.

An incredible athlete, he competed in the long jump for Clemson’s track and field team during his redshirt season of 2016. “He had everything in place to be an NCAA-champion jumper if that was his primary event,” Clemson track coach Mark Elliott said. “From a coaching side … if you have an athlete like that on your track team and he’s a jumper, you can only think about how good the person could be. Just the speed that he has and for the size (he is), personally, was impressive.” Simmons was a state champion in that event at Olathe (Kan.) North High School. Still, he wasn’t on Clemson’s recruiting radar. At all. “Had never heard of him,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. But when his starting safeties elected to head to the NFL, Swinney was forced to find some late recruits.

Simmons’ brother played cornerback at Kansas. His dad runs a track club in which the brothers competed against each other and pushed each other to get better. “One day, his brother and him were arguing over who had the most national medals,” Victor Simmons Sr. said. “… Isaiah used to be really thin, but you know what? He was always a force to be reckoned with. Little league football, there was this skinny little kid who was so fast, who would score four, five touchdowns a game. A safety on the other side, he would knock those kids out.”

Kenneth Murray, Oklahoma (6-2, 243)*: Murray was an All-American with team-leading totals of 102 tackles and 17 tackles for losses. He added four sacks and four pass breakups. In three seasons, he piled up 335 tackles and 37 tackles for losses. He started as an 18-year-old freshman. “It was a great experience, you know, learning all that stuff. Going through the year, I definitely learned a lot from Game 1 to Game 14. Listening to my coaches and stuff like that, I learned a lot.”

In July, he perhaps saved a life. While coming home from search, he helped a woman who was unconscious and bleeding from her head. He performed CPR on the woman, who was deaf. “She looked like she was dead to be honest. Immediately going through my head was to start CPR. I had my girlfriend call 911. … We got her back, got her breathing. We got her to the point where she was blinking a little bit.” When he was 10, his parents adopted three siblings, each of them with special needs. “Kenny decided early on that this was something we had to do to help take care of them,” said Murray’s mom, Dianne. Murray also has a biological sister, Kimberly, who is 17 years old. “They’re his younger brothers and sister. He’s very proud of them and loves helping out when he comes home … He’s the best big brother they could ask for.” Of the adopted kids, one is 18 and reads at a second-grade level. The others, who are 13 and 10, can’t speak. “It’s something that I’m extremely grateful for,” said Murray, whose father is a minster. “It makes me extremely grateful for the things that I have. Just the basic things.” He graduated in December with a degree in communication.

Patrick Queen, LSU (6-1, 227)*: Queen replaced Devin White and the defense hardly skipped a beat. In 14 games (11 starts), he had 77 tackles, 2.5 sacks, 9.5 tackles for losses, one interception and three passes defensed.

At Livonia High School, the native of Ventress, La., was an all-state running back who rushed for almost 3,300 yards as a junior and senior. He was the first person from Livonia to earn a scholarship from the school. Stardom came from the moment he was born. “Louisiana State University Tigers is your destination,” his father, Dwayne Queen, proclaimed from the hospital. He was the “miracle baby” for his parents, who had tried for three years to get pregnant. He was a prodigy – and not just in football. When he was 5, he figured out how to start his dad’s four-wheeler. When he was older, Dwayne had his son pushing a sled up the banks of the Mississippi River. “At 8 years old, Patrick was hitting the ball across the fence,” his dad said. “By the time he was 10, we had to start bringing a birth certificate to all (of his) the baseball games. They thought he was too old to be playing, and once they saw the birth certificate, they found out he was younger that the other kids he was playing against.”

Zack Baun, Wisconsin (6-3, 240)*: Baun had a breakout final season with 12.5 sacks, 19.5 tackles for losses and two forced fumbles to be named one of six finalists for the Butkus Award. An outside linebacker in the Badgers’ 3-4 scheme, he projects to an off-the-ball linebacker in the NFL. Former Badgers star Joe Schobert made a similar transition in the NFL and became a stalwart linebacker for the Browns.

At Brown Deer (Wis.) High School, Baun was a prolific quarterback who passed for 3,061 yards and 27 touchdowns and rushed for 3,923 yards and 67 touchdowns in 22 career games. Also in high school, he started on the school’s state champion basketball team and won state titles in the 100- and 200-meter dashes. Still, his recruiting letter from the Badgers came addressed to Zack Brown. As he emerged as star, he got a new nickname: Sack Baun. It almost didn’t happen, though. Brown Deer’s coach had to put on a full-court press to get the basketball-loving Baun to try football. “We’re fast. We run spread. I think you could help us, and I think we could help you,” coach Rob Green said. “He said ‘maybe.’ For the first time, he didn’t tell me no.” Baun’s quarterback experience helped him play defense. “With the spread offenses nowadays everyone’s running the zone read — it’s exactly what I ran in high school. I was a running quarterback, I was rarely handing the ball off in those zone reads. Players are so undisciplined in high school, I was keeping it every time. It taught me as an edge defender to be patient and hold your water.’’

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Troy Dye, Oregon (6-4, 226): Dye led the Ducks in tackles all four seasons, finishing his career with 397 tackles, 15 sacks, 44 tackles for losses, five interceptions, 21 passes defensed and three forced fumbles. As a senior, he had a career-low 84 tackles but career highs of two interceptions and two forced fumbles. His numbers were hurt by a broken thumb. “You don’t really understand how much you use your dominant hand,” he said.

As a freshman in 2016, the Ducks went 4-8. “I think it build the foundation for the senior. Without that year, we don’t have the passion, the aggression, that we have now. Because, I mean, we were getting our face kicked in for the majority of the season. It was just a blood-bath out there — and we weren’t the ones doing the killing. We were the ones getting killed. That really kind of set the standard for us, to look back like, OK, we can’t do that again.” Dye and Oregon track star Makenzie Dunmore are due to become parents in April. He considered entering the draft last year but returned for his senior campaign. He was happy about his decision. “There’s things that I’ve done that you can’t take back, undefeated at home, winning the Pac-12 Championship, beating Stanford and Washington on the road, SC on the road. It’s great to check those things off the bucket list.”

Akeem Davis-Gaither, Appalachian State (6-2, 219): Davis-Gaither earned some All-American accolades and was named Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year as a senior after posting 104 tackles, 14.5 tackles for losses, five sacks, eight pass breakups, one interception and one blocked field goal. While those numbers came against lesser competition, the interception came in the second half of an upset of North Carolina and the block clinched that victory. The eight pass breakups ranked fourth nationally among non-defensive backs.

Davis-Gaither was a two-star recruit from Thomasville, N.C., due in part to weighing only 175 pounds. “I didn’t take my diet seriously and with me being one of the few that went on to play college ball from my class, I couldn’t do the same things that they did. The first thing that the staff did was to set me up with a nutritionist and my eating habits weren’t all that well, which led to why I was so light. After my freshman year on campus, I got up to 195, then 205, then 210 and then 215-plus this season.” His father is receivers coach at Western Michigan. His position coach was D.J. Smith, a former App. State linebacker and Packers linebacker. “For this scheme, he’s your guy,” Smith said. “A guy that’s big, long, can run, is smart and has a high football IQ. You expect that from that guy.”

Malik Harrison, Ohio State (6-3, 240): A two-year starter, Harrrison led the team with 75 tackles and added 4.5 sacks, 16.5 tackles for losses and four pass breakups as a senior. “I think Malik has a chance to be one of the best in the country,” Ohio State linebackers coach Al Washington said early in the season. “And I’ll tell him that. I’m not a guy [to withhold praise], and I’m honest. I think he has the ability — but you have to exercise that ability every day.”

A native of Columbus, Ohio, he played quarterback and several other positions at Walnut Ridge High School and helped lead the basketball team to its first state tournament. “He had a really wicked stiff-arm,” Walnut Ridge football coach Byron Mattox said. “It looked like that tight end for the Steelers a lot of times, he’d just stiff-arm kids and they’d crumble to the ground. He jumped over a couple guys in high school. One other thing that stands out, he was playing basketball, some of the dunks. He was just the leader of that basketball team and brought a lot of excitement to the games with his acrobatic dunks and all that type of stuff.” He went to Ohio State to play receiver.

Logan Wilson, Wyoming (6-2, 250): As a senior, Wilson earned All-American honors and was one of six finalists for the Butkus Award to cap a prodigious career. He concluded his career with 421 tackles, which ranks No. 4 in Wyoming history and No. 4 in Mountain West history. He became the fourth player in school history to record three 100-tackle seasons (105 in 2019, 103 in 2018 and 119 in 2017). Among active players, he ranked No. 1 among FBS players in career defensive touchdowns (4), No. 1 in solo tackles (253), No. 2 in tackles (421) and No. 6 in interceptions (10). Moreover, he was a three-year captain. “I don’t do anything out of my comfort zone. I have always tried to do the right things, even in high school. I’ve always had that feeling that if you do little things right that is what adds up to big things. If we do little things right, it makes the team successful.”

Growing up in Casper, Wyo., he was a receiver, defensive back and all-state punter who made the move to linebacker at Wyoming. The two-star, 195-pound recruit emerged as a star. “They just always instilled in me that good things happen to those that work hard,” Logan Wilson said. “My dad, he always humbled me. If I ever got some sort of award or anything, he would say, ‘That’s a good job, bud. Now keep working.’ He never let my head get too big. I think that’s helped me with where I’m at right now. No matter what I’ve gotten or not gotten, I just continued to have the same mentality each and every day. I’m just going to work to get better.”

Jordyn Brooks, Texas Tech (6-1, 245): Brooks earned several All-American honors and was a finalist for the Butkus Award following a senior season in which he led the team with 108 tackles, 20 tackles for losses and three sacks. Over the course of four seasons, he recorded 6.5 sacks, 32 tackles for losses, 360 total tackles and two forced fumbles. He paced the team in tackles three times.

Brooks received only one in-state offer from a Power 5 school and wasn’t considered much of an NFL prospect entering his senior season. “He’s a guy we liked over the summer, but he’s risen on our board about as much as any player in the country,” said Jim Nagy, executive director of the Senior Bowl and a longtime NFL scout. “I don’t know if anyone has made a bigger jump at linebacker this fall than Jordyn.” Extra study time with first-year defensive coordinator Keith Patterson helped. “He didn’t force me to come up there two days a week and go meet with him. He just kind of kept mentioning it: ‘I’m telling you; this is what can get you better.’ And I just took his advice, and we meet probably three days a week from time that’s not mandatory to be up here. Just still going over the game plan. Just keep going over the game plan.”

Justin Strnad, Wake Forest (6-3, 235): Strnad recorded 69 tackles in seven games as a senior, his season limited to seven games due to a torn bicep tendon. Strnad had a game-clinching interception against Utah State and its prized quarterback, Jordan Love. He had a career-high 105 tackles and 8.5 tackles for losses as a junior and 51 tackles, 4.5 sacks, 8.5 tackles for losses, three interceptions and two forced fumbles as a sophomore. His four-year total was 244 tackles, 22.5 TFLs, eight sacks, four interceptions, 10 passes defensed and three forced fumbles.

Strnad went from the 1,550th-ranked recruit in the nation to team captain. “It’s an honor to have the respect of my teammates and have them make me a captain. All I’m doing is trying to lead our team, bring energy to practice every day and just doing things the right way in this [football] program. So, hopefully, younger guys can see that and want to do that as they go along in this program. That’s really what builds a winning culture. You know, you get multiple people to buy [into the program’s culture] and do things that will help us win football games.” The bicep injury came against Florida State – the school the native of Palm Harbor, Fla., cheered for as a kid. “Every time I go home, it’s just all my friends who still root for Florida State, (other) than when they’re playing Wake, are always asking me, ‘Is this the year you’ve got Florida State?’ This game is important to me.”