'Johnny's turn now': Mizzou defensive end Walker Jr. stepping into new leadership role (2024)

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Superstition prevents Johnny Walker Jr. from getting too specific.

Missouri’s fifth-year defensive end, expected to be a starter for the second year in a row, has clear goals for this season. He just doesn’t feel good about the idea of sharing them too broadly.

“I want to be the most dominant edge rusher in the SEC,” Walker told the Post-Dispatch. That’s the big-picture one.

“I have personal goals,” he continued, “but I have a superstition: If I tell people, they won’t come true.”

It doesn’t seem prudent to argue with the logic of a veteran player like Walker. He’s been around the block several times with Mizzou.

Walker is one of just five players still on the MU roster who were on the team in 2020, Eli Drinkwitz’s first season as the program’s coach, and the only defensive player to have stuck around that long.

Part of why Walker has been with the Tigers for so long is that it took a while for him to find regular playing time. He enrolled as a 204-pound outside linebacker, redshirting early on to focus on bulking up. Sitting behind NFL talent like Isaiah McGuire and D.J. Coleman also slowed down Walker.

But last year he was a full-blown starter. And now he’s the elder statesman of a pass rush comprised heavily of new pieces.

“Five years, man,” Walker said. “Finally come into a role of my own.”

He was productive as a starter in 2023, even with the Tigers rotating defensive ends frequently to keep fresh legs charging off the edge. Walker recorded five sacks, 8.5 tackles for a loss and three forced fumbles. He led the team in quarterback hurries with nine.

In Mizzou’s Cotton Bowl win over Ohio State, Walker recorded two tackles, a sack and a fumble — vital plays during a defense-heavy game and enough to earn him the game’s defensive MVP award.

“I like to erase the previous things I’ve done,” Walker said, “just because I don’t like leaning on past accomplishments. I’m taking it with me, but there’s better things ahead of me.”

Still, a season in the spotlight of the starting lineup put Walker solidly in the focus of the Tigers’ coaching staff, which includes a new edge rushers coach in Brian Early.

When Early joined Missouri from Houston ahead of spring practices, he quickly noted that Walker was primed for a key role in 2024.

“When I took the job, Coach Drink went through the roster with me,” Early said. “I knew that Johnny had had a really good season and was Cotton Bowl MVP and had played a lot of football around here. We talk about in here that great players make everyone around them better. That’s really the challenge for someone like Johnny: not only try to improve as an individual but also, instead of calling guys out, call guys up, trying to help me coach some of these younger guys.”

That’s a familiar role to defensive linemen at Mizzou, but the figure who so strongly embodied leadership for the Tigers’ defense — Darius Robinson, a first-round draft pick now with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals — is gone.

Early was hired after Robinson had played his final game in black and gold, but he quickly picked up on the kind of legacy that still lingered around the team facility.

“I think D-Rob was the alpha in this room,” Early said, “and that person is gone and someone else has to move into that role so those standards that have been set here and upheld by players of the past like D-Rob.”

Enter Walker. In his first meeting with Early, the defensive end told his new coach that Robinson was someone he’d looked up to for several years.

Robinson had started his college career one year before Walker did, becoming something of a mentor for the edge rusher who needed time to rise to the level of the SEC.

That was helpful for Walker, but now he faces the challenge of trying to replace a leader he respected.

“D-Rob led in a great way, his own way,” Walker said. “I don’t think it’s right to try and copy him.”

So what does that style of commanding a group of defensive ends look like?

“D-Rob was a lot more vocal. I’m working on that,” Walker said. “I feel like there’s no such thing as ‘lead by example’ — that’s just the standard that we have here for the team. But I believe showing up every day and working hard and letting other dudes follow me, that’s my way of leading.”

Walker seems like a candidate for the “joker” role in new defensive coordinator Corey Batoon’s system, a snappy name for a familiar position, the boundary — the side closer to the sideline — defensive end.

That spot tends to go to a team’s best pass rusher, taking on the responsibility of being the primary source of pressure. When Walker crouches into his stances as the Tigers’ joker, he’ll have the long-earned respect of the MU program and the responsibility of producing results solidly in hand.

“It’s Johnny’s turn now,” Early said.