Last year, Eric Walden was showing a lot of promise at the OLB position.  While he played in 15 games for the Packers, he wasn’t nearly as effective as he and the Packers had hoped he would be. 

Walden was making continual progress until he was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct on November 25th after his girlfriend accused him of a domestic dispute at their apartment in Lawrence, WI.  While Walden pleaded no contest to the charges as part of a plea agreement which allowed him to avoid jail time, the NFL has now chimed in.  Walden will be suspended for the 1st game of the Packers 2012 season.

This is now all in the past, hopefully, and Walden can move forward knowing his future with the Packers and the NFL.  This leaves him the sole ability to concentrate on honing his skills for the Packers.  Walden, while completing 50 hours of community service, has worked on in the off-season at re-focusing his efforts on becoming a better player in Dom Capers defense.  “Eric’s got a solid focus and has really dedicated himself to getting better”, Capers said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get better as a defensie this year and Eric knows his ability and we’ve got faith in him and he’s really taken it upon himself to get better both personally and professionally.”

If Walden can once again become the “hitter” and tackler he has showed us he can be, that will be a big breath of fresh air for a defense that was just short of woeful in the “fundamentally sound” department.