Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press

Tyrunn Walker was just starting to get comfortable with his new role in his new defense when his 2015 season was lost to a broken leg.

Now eight months removed from that injury, Walker looks primed to pick up where he left off as an anchor of the Detroit Lions' deep defensive line.

After sitting out team drills for precautionary reasons this spring, Walker was a full participant in this week's just-completed mandatory minicamp.

He took first-team reps at defensive tackle alongside Haloti Ngata and A'Shawn Robinson, and he said last year's injury has given him a new perspective on football.

"It lets you know that you can’t take this game for granted," Walker said this week. "I was talking to Coach, and we were talking about that Seattle game (when I got injured). I was really starting to get into the defense and starting to learn how they really wanted me to play it, and I was getting a niche for it and just like, 'Boom.' You can’t avoid it. I couldn’t do nothing to change that play, so it just shows you that you got to take every play as it is, and you can’t take it for granted."

Walker dislocated his ankle and broke his fibula in a pile-up near the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter of the Lions' Week 4 loss to the Seahawks.

He made just nine tackles in four games last year, but he was the team's most effective interior linemen early in the season, when Ngata and Caraun Reid were battling injuries.

Walker signed a one-year deal to stay with the Lions as a free agent this spring, in part because he said he had unfinished business with the team.

He and Ngata were just beginning to find their chemistry together at the time of his injury -- Ngata missed all of last year's training camp with a strained hamstring -- and he liked the Lions' attack-based front after playing in a read-and-react system his first three NFL seasons with the New Orleans Saints.

This year, Walker said he'll be "much more polished" as a player despite having some rust to shake off from inactivity.

"Now I can really go out and put my touch on it, 'cause I know what they expect, I know what they want from me," he said. "I know what they want me to do, so it’s good."

A projected starter alongside Ngata, Walker said he was happy to see the Lions draft Robinson in the second round, even if it means fewer snaps for him. Robinson, Reid, Stefan Charles, Gabe Wright and Khyri Thornton are vying for time as backups, and Walker said that depth should help both him and the team reach their potential.

"If I can play 30 to 35 snaps a game full tilt, and A’Shawn plays 30 to 35, Haloti, Caraun, whoever else, we’re going to be the freshest people on the field, and ain’t nobody gonna stop us like that," he said.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett

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