GREEN BAY — Jeff Hafley has only spoken to the Green Bay Packers’ beat-writing corps once since taking over as the team’s new defensive coordinator.

And when Hafley did conduct that Q&A session with reporters in February, he didn’t delve too far into the specifics of what his 4-3 defense will look like — the first time the Packers will have a 4-3 base system since 2008, the year before Dom Capers and the 3-4 scheme arrived in Green Bay and helped deliver the franchise’s 13th NFL championship with Super Bowl XLV.

For instance, Hafley didn’t break down how he plans on aligning the linebackers in the base defense, or even what he calls them.

Back in 2008, the final year of Bob Sanders’ tenure, the Packers started the season with A.J. Hawk as the starting “Will” (weakside) linebacker, Nick Barnett as the “Mike” (middle) linebacker and Brady Poppinga as the “Sam” (strongside) linebacker.

Who will fill those roles in 2024? The guess here is that ultra-athletic 2022 first-round draft pick Quay Walker will be the Will, given his ability to go from sideline to sideline and drop in coverage. Isaiah McDuffie is the logical choice as the Mike, where he’d be a tackling machine. What they’ll do at Sam is hard to predict, although veterans Eric Wilson or Kristian Welch would be the top in-house candidates if the Packers don’t take a linebacker early in this week’s draft.

To this point, Hafley hasn’t dropped too many breadcrumbs — given how much more time defenses league-wide spend in their nickel packages, the Packers won’t be in the base 4-3 nearly as much as they were during the 1990s and 2000s anyway — but he did seem enthusiastic about what Walker could become in this scheme after two uneven seasons in the 3-4.

“Quay’s a talented player. As we build this thing, we’re going to make sure he’s in position to make a lot of plays,” Hafley said. “So, whatever we feel, as we piece this together, where that is, that’s where we’ll put him.”

As for McDuffie, who played one season for Hafley at Boston College and moves into a more prominent role following the offseason release of 2021 first-team All-Pro inside linebacker De’Vondre Campbell, Hafley said he and McDuffie “talked very quickly after I took the job. It’ll be good to be around him again.”

Asked about McDuffie and how he feels about the linebacker group at the NFL Meetings, general manager Brian Gutekunst replied, “I feel really good about Isaiah. We obviously signed Eric Wilson back. We signed Kristian Welch back. (So), I feel much better now. We’ll add (more), I’m sure, whether it’s the draft or later on in free agency. I’m sure we’ll add to that competition in that room. But I do feel better about it.”

Depth chart

Best in class

Junior Colson, Michigan

Colson’s life story reads like an incredibly compelling Hollywood movie script, having been orphaned in his native Haiti and brought to the United States by a family that had come to his native country to do humanitarian work after Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake. Colson was 9 at the time and assimilated into his new country through playing sports.

He took to football after focusing on soccer and grew into a four-star recruit and wound up at Michigan, where in three college seasons he tallied 257 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and five pass breakups.

“Ever since I stepped on a football field, I always wanted to be the best. Whatever you put your name to, wherever you lay down, you always want to try to be the best at it, or why even try to do it at all?” Colson said at the NFL scouting combine. “To help me get here, it’s just more grit and the will of God. He’s blessed me with so much potential and talent to be able to be here now. So why waste it? I survived an earthquake, I survived both my parents passing away, I don’t think there’s anything that somebody can throw at me that I’m not ready for or expecting.”

Best of the rest

Edgerrin Cooper, Texas A&M; Trevin Wallace, Kentucky; Payton Wilson, North Carolina State; Tommy Eichenberg, Ohio State; Cedric Gray, North Carolina.

Pick to click

Wilson

The 6-foot-4, 236-pound Wilson took a top-30 in-person visit to Green Bay, a sign that the Packers are clearly interested in him.

He spent six years at N.C. State, including a redshirt year in 2018. He went on to play in 46 games over the next five seasons, and despite missing time with several shoulder injuries, he led the Wolfpack in tackles three times and saved his best season for last, registering 138 tackles, 17.5 tackles for loss, six sacks and three interceptions in 2023.

If able to stay healthy, Wilson looks like a potential Day 2 steal.

“Early in my career, I did have a lot of injuries, but these last two years, I’ve stayed really healthy, put on some extra weight,” Wilson said at the combine. “I’ve really honed in on nutrition and maintenance programs to keep me healthy. I think what I have going on is going to keep me playing a long time in the NFL and I’m not scared of injuries. What I have going right now for myself, I feel like I have good formula to play for a long time in this league.”

History lesson

Gutekunst’s selection of Walker at No. 22 in 2022 represented a major investment in a position that many other teams view as less vital than edge rushers, run-stuffing defensive tackles and cover cornerbacks.

The Packers were also running a 4-3 back in 2006, when then-GM Ted Thompson took Ohio State’s Hawk with the fifth overall pick. While Hawk would go on to become the franchise’s all-time leader in tackles, he wasn’t a field-tilting player — not in the 4-3 his first three seasons, and not in the 3-4 thereafter.

Before that, the most significant draft-day investments at linebacker in the 4-3 had been Southern Cal’s Brian Williams (third round, 1995), Ohio State’s Na’il Diggs (fourth round, 2000), Oklahoma’s Torrance Marshall (third round, 2001) and BYU’s Poppinga (fourth round, 2005).

For his part, Gutekunst sees the linebackers in the 4-3 as “pretty interchangeable” and suggested that the third of the three linebackers won’t see all that much playing time anyway.

“It’ll be interesting how we go about it this year, but he’s only on the field 15% of the time or less,” Gutekunst said. “I think the most a team really utilized that (linebacker) was close to 20%. So, it’s not a lot.”