Buccaneers Lose Rookie OLB for the Season

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers got some bad news Monday morning. As reported by Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, Outside Linebacker David Walker is out for the season with an ACL injury.

Via Stroud,

“Bucs DL David Walker has a torn ACL and is out for the season.”

A huge blow to the Bucs pass rush depth as David Walker was set to be battling for reps with Chris Braswell behind Yaya Diaby and Haason Reddick. Now, it looks like the focus will be put onto Braswell to see if he really is all that. He didn’t have a super impressive rookie campaign, but he was always a developmental type of pass rusher. All reporting from camp seems to suggest Braswell may very well be ready to take that leap forward. If that happens, then the Walker injury becomes less impactful.

Behind the top three guys, it’ll be Jose Ramirez and Markees battling it out. Neither of them have really proven ability, but for depth pieces, you can certainly do a lot worse. I’m curious if the Bucs will end up bringing anyone in just for rotational depth, but the FA pool isn’t especially deep. Matthew Judon is probably the best one, so that doesn’t speak super highly of that group.

This just sucks. Walker would’ve had an uphill battle to get meaningful snaps, but he was looking really promising and now he just won’t have that chance at all. One can only hope that he comes back even stronger next year and that’ll be his chance to make an impact. Between this and the Wirfs injury, hopefully there isn’t too many more injuries.