The Jets didn’t bring Mykal Walker in last year expecting much. He landed on the practice squad just before the 2025 season, another veteran body in a league that chews through them. By the end of the year, though, he had carved out a real role for himself and emerged as one of the steadier pieces on a defense that was constantly being patched together.
Walker’s path to that point was already a long one. The Falcons took him in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL Draft after a productive run at Fresno State, and he opened his career with 20 starts over his first three seasons in Atlanta. Since then, he’s bounced around the league with stops in Chicago, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Washington, and Arizona before arriving in New York.
Once he got to the Jets, he settled in as a backup linebacker and core special teamer. That part of his game showed up right away: he played 81 percent of the Jets’ special teams snaps, the second-highest total on the roster, and posted an 80.2 Pro Football Focus special teams grade. His defensive workload didn’t really take off until the final month of the season.
That’s when Walker became one of the few bright spots on a December defense loaded with practice squad call-ups and players signed off the street. The situation was ugly, and plenty of those snaps came in garbage time, but Walker still played well.
Over the final five games, he earned the eighth-highest PFF grade among qualified NFL linebackers with at least 130 defensive snaps. In that stretch, he recorded 21 tackles, a tackle for loss, and a pass breakup, and he finished the season without a missed tackle.
It was a small sample, and it came during a miserable Jets season, but it still mattered. There’s a legitimate case that this was the best five-game run of Walker’s NFL career. He kept doing his job on special teams, too, giving Chris Banjo another reliable piece on one of the league’s strongest units.
Heading into 2026, the Jets don’t need Walker to suddenly become something he’s not. He should be fighting to hold onto his spot as the team’s top backup linebacker while continuing to play a major role on special teams. That kind of value matters over a 17-game season, especially when injuries start to pile up.
New York already saw Walker handle a bigger defensive workload when called upon, and he proved he could manage it. He may never be a household name, but he showed last season that he can be exactly the kind of dependable veteran every roster needs.
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