Doc Walker on the secret to the Commanders' defense
The start of the 2024 NFL season feels far away, but with less than 100 days until the season kicks off on a Thursday night in Kansas City, football's glorious return is actually a lot closer than you may think.
With that in mind, it is not too early to start looking ahead at the year to come after the dust has settled on the first phase of the offseason workouts, there is a much better understanding of how good and bad each team might be heading into training camp starting later this month.
With that being said, CBS Sports recently put together a list of the Top 20 linebackers in the NFL and it highlighted something many people around the league are starting to notice: The Washington Commanders – whose linebacking corps was a position of weakness last season – appear to have one of the better units (at least on paper) in football.
Frankie Luvu, who joined this offseason from the Carolina Panthers, comes in at No. 17 on Jordan Dajani's list. And veteran Bobby Wagner, signed from the Seattle Seahawks after a single-season sojourn with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022, comes in at No. 9.
On The Kevin Sheehan Show, with Doc Walker filling in for Kevin, producer Denton Day relied that Team 980 host Chris Russell got a text from somebody in the NFL that "Washington has one of the best linebacker corps in the NFL."
Doc knows that it is "old school" to think about toughness and the linebacker used to be the toughest and badest guys on the field.
"Do you know what the impact that the captain, London Fletcher, brought here when we were trying to get back to prominence again, trying to be respectable again?" Doc said. "It's gonna be so much fun to watch Bobby Wagner here play behind those oxen we have upfront. I don't think we've ever been able to reap the benefit of having those two oxen we have upfront because, yeah, we had them, but we have not been able to really reap the benefit... because they didn't work in concert with guys who could plug holes, not run by them. Plug 'em. I think those days are over."
Doc continued to add that not only do the Commanders have better personnel on the field to fill these roles, but the addition of defensive coordinator Bobby Whitt Jr. and head coach Dan Quinn will really bring the entire thing together. "Now it's just ready to go do it," he said.
