Craig Walton Jr.

#37 · CB · R-Jr. · LSU5′11″ · 174 lb · Camden, NJ

Craig Walton Jr. is a cornerback at LSU who has not played in LSU's 8 games this season; the last season with a stat line was 2024.

Where Walton comes from

  • Camden, NJHometown
  • CamdenHigh school
  • About 1,100 miles from Tiger Stadium (LA)Distance
  • On the LSU roster since 2024Roster

Where Walton fits

The consensus depth chart of May 27 lists Walton at CB, No. 1.

LSU lists 22 defensive backs this season.

LSU defensive backs with a game this season

LSU is 6-2, No. 15 in the AP poll (week 10). Next: vs Alabama, Sat Nov 7.

Similar players

Also from Camden, NJ

The story

As of

Walton came to Baton Rouge in 2023 as a decorated Camden, New Jersey high-school defender — 67 tackles, 12 for loss as a senior — and the kind of recruit New Jersey football people quietly bookmark. Three years later, the discourse around him isn't on the message boards; it's in the fine print of LSU's roster page, where he's listed as a returning walk-on cornerback and a two-time SEC Academic Honor Roll member. His 2025 box score is honest about where he stands: one game, five kickoff-coverage snaps in a blowout of Southeastern Louisiana, no defensive reps.

Read the rest of the story

That's the gap worth naming. Somewhere upstream, Walton got tagged as a Thorpe-watch shutdown corner; the living reality is a developmental walk-on in one of the country's most stacked secondaries. And the math got harder before the season, not easier — LSU's 2026 corner room added five-star sophomore DJ Pickett's rise and transfer Lavonte Williams, with the secondary returning roughly three-quarters of its snap experience. Continuity is great for the Tigers and brutal for a player still hunting his first defensive snap.

What keeps the story open is that Walton stayed. He didn't hit the portal when the depth chart thickened — he's back for a fourth year in the program. The forward stake is small in the national sense and enormous in his: after three seasons of special-teams cameos, does 2026 produce a single meaningful defensive snap, or does the room simply keep growing around him?

Update (Nov. 2, 2026): Through LSU's first eight games our box-score data shows no tackles or pass breakups for him.

Sources

Style of play

Style of play

Play style

No play-by-play sample exists on Walton — he hasn't logged defensive reps — so this is a scouting read, not a metrics card. The profile is a press-man corner's body: 5-11, 175, built lean and quick out of a New Jersey program that asked him to tackle (67 stops, 12 TFL as a prep senior), which shows up as willingness in run support and on coverage units. His college tape is special-teams tape — kickoff-coverage lanes, sprint-and-fit discipline — which is exactly the proving ground walk-ons use to earn a defensive look. The question marks are the ones every undersized developmental corner carries: recovery speed against SEC verticals and whether the hips translate from gunner to boundary. Until he sees rotation snaps, the evaluation stays projection, not production.

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