Packers sign McDuffie to contract extension

McDuffie was a sixth-round pick of the Packers back in 2021 and has emerged as a key player for the defense over the last two seasons. Since 2023, McDuffie has started in 25 of the 33 regular season games he’s appeared in, racking up 183 tackles, eight TFLs, and one forced fumble. McDuffie has a chance to earn up to $9.5 million over the next two seasons, and could play himself into a larger deal come 2027.

The Packers go into Week 1 at full health against a Saints defense missing some key players. They’ll play an “away” game against the Saints in Jacksonville while New Orleans recovers from Hurricane Ida.

McDuffie, a three-star recruit from Buffalo, led Boston College and ranked fifth in the nation with 107 tackles in a breakout junior year. He joins sixth-round OL Cole Van Lanen, seventh-round RB Kylin Hill, and fifth-rounders Shemar Jean-Charles and T.J. Slaton as Day 3 picks to sign with the Packers. McDuffie slots in at $3.6 million with a $130K signing bonus on his rookie deal.

McDuffie (6’1/227) is a former three-star prospect who comes from a football family. His father is a well known high school coach in the Buffalo area. Another in a long line of productive BC linebackers, McDuffie broke out in 2018 by recording 85 tackles, 5.5 TFL, 3.5 sacks and two PBU. A knee injury cut his 2019 to just four games, but McDuffie returned with a vengeance in 2020, leading the team with 107 tackles, 6.5 TFL and 3.0 sacks while earning second team All-ACC recognition. He ran a brisk 4.61 40-yard dash (86th percentile) and put up 25 bench reps (86th percentile), but his agility drills weren’t great and at 227 pounds the BC tackling machine is very light for the position (22nd percentile). What McDuffie lacks in size, he makes up for with speed and hustle, making sideline-to-sideline plays and aggressively attacking run lanes. He will sometimes take bad angles and is a liability in coverage with a 132.2 NFL passer rating against.