Scott Gulbransen
I know how this sounds. Every July, somebody tells you the Raiders finally fixed a position group and by December you remember why you quit believing it. Fine. But I’ve been watching this team punt on linebacker since before the moving trucks left Oakland and I’m telling you Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker are the best two Raiders linebackers this franchise has had in the building at the same time since the 2002 Super Bowl team.
I’m not hedging on that one.
Why 2026 Raiders Linebackers are Different
Start with what the front office actually spent, because the money tells you how John Spytek views this position. Dean signed a three-year, $36 million deal with $20 million guaranteed. Walker got three years, $40.5 million, $28 million guaranteed. That’s more than $76 million committed to two off-ball linebackers in a league that has spent a decade telling you the position doesn’t matter. The Raiders spent it anyway, and given how this defense looked at the second level last season, they were right to do so.
You know the recent history here and it isn’t pretty. Robert Spillane gave this team two excellent seasons, including a franchise-record 158 tackles in 2024, and then walked to New England in free agency because the previous regime wouldn’t pay him. The patch job that followed featured Germaine Pratt, Elandon Roberts and Devin White, a group of veterans on the back end of their careers that most rankings slotted somewhere in the bottom third of the league. Pratt could still hit but got exposed in coverage. White barely saw the field the year before Vegas signed him. It was a room built to survive a season, not win one.
Dean, Walker Combo Just Coming into Prime
Dean and Walker are a different bet entirely. Both are 26 or younger through the 2026 season. Both are entering their prime. And the fit between them is what should have Raiders fans paying attention.
Dean is a true signal-calling Mike, the guy who wore the green dot in Philadelphia and put up 128 tackles and three sacks for a Super Bowl roster in 2024. He’s also one of the more dangerous blitzing linebackers in football, with seven sacks over the past two seasons. Put him in the middle of the call sheet, and Walker gets to do what he does best: run and chase. He led the Packers in tackles four straight years. That’s not a fluke stat. That’s a player who finds the football.
Then there’s the Georgia thread. Dean and Walker shared a defense in Athens for three seasons, went 34-5, and won the 2021 national championship together. Chemistry gets oversold in this league, but communication between your two starting linebackers is the one place where it’s real. These two have been talking on a football field since 2019.
Raiders Potential at Linebacker is Just That: Potential
Now, the honest counterargument, because you should hear it from me before you hear it from someone else. Neither player has taken a snap in the Silver and Black. Dean is 18 months removed from a torn patellar tendon, and while he answered the durability question by returning last October and posting a career-high four sacks in 10 games, he also missed the final two weeks with a hamstring issue. And Raiders fans of a certain age don’t need reminding of what happened the last time this franchise threw big money at a free-agent linebacker. Cory Littleton signed for $35.25 million in 2020 and was released two years later, one of the worst signings of the Gruden era.
But here’s why I’m comfortable with the call. The Littleton signing was one in which a player was asked to be a savior in a scheme that misused him. This is two players, built to complement each other, signed by a GM who has spent this entire offseason acquiring cleanly at positions of need. The depth behind them is functional too, with Roberts and White still around for running downs and Cody Lindenberg coming off a spring that has the coaching staff intrigued.
The 2002 group of Bill Romanowski, Eric Barton and Napoleon Harris played in a Super Bowl. This one hasn’t played a down together yet. We start finding out whether the comparison holds when veterans report to Henderson on July 28.
