Tracy Walker wins NFC Defensive Player of the Week

The NFL announced on Wednesday morning that Detroit Lions safety Tracy Walker has been named the NFC Defensive Player of the Week after his performances against the Green Bay Packers.

Walker finished Sunday with a career-high 14 tackles and a game-sealing interception of Jordan Love, his first pick of the season. Walker was a force in the run game, but also allowed just 13 yards in coverage according to PFF.

Walker, of course, was humble about his own performance. Instead of focusing on the plays he made, he was thinking about the plays he didn’t make—including a missed tackle that led to a go-ahead touchdown for the Packers late in the game.

“I’m just happy I got the win. I ain’t thinking about the stats or the numbers right now,” Walker said. “Like i said, I had a good game, but I didn’t have the best game. I missed that touchdown tackle, so at the end of the day, it’s a lot of things that I still can clean up.”

Walker is the first Lions defender to earn the award since Darius Slay in 2018 and the first Lions safety to earn NFC Defensive Player of the Week honors since Glover Quin in 2014.

Walker joins Jared Goff and Riley Patterson as the only Lions players to earn weekly honors this season. However, a cool note from the Lions PR Twitter account: this is the first time since 2011 that the Lions have had an Offensive, Defensive and Special Teams Player of the Week all in one year.

Next up for Walker is free agency. The Lions veteran safety has expressed a lot of love for the team’s coaching staff, and on Tuesday, Lions general manager Brad Holmes suggested Walker is the kind of player they want around.

“Tracy had already been with us obviously, but a new scheme, a new regime, new coaching staff, and he responded well, he really did,” Holmes said. “And, I thought he played good football for us and he really bought into everything that we’re doing.”

He later added, while also talking about edge defender Charles Harris, “Those guys were fits, they fit what we’re about, and those guys played well for us.”

Congratulations to Tracy Walker. Let’s hope this isn’t the last we see of him. But if it was, not a bad way to go out.