Zaire Franklin – NFL Tackles Leader, Green Bay Packer, Philadelphia Kid Who Made It the Hard Way
The Number That Explains Everything
Seven hundred and seven. That’s how many tackles Zaire Franklin made in eight seasons with the Indianapolis Colts. For context: he was the 235th pick in the 2018 draft. The Colts got him because they’d traded Henry Anderson to the Jets, received a seventh-round pick back, and used it on a linebacker from Syracuse that most analysts filed under “camp body.” By 2024, that camp body was leading the entire NFL in tackles and earning his first Pro Bowl nod. The gap between those two facts is the whole story.
Born in Philadelphia, Raised by Two Women He Lost at 16
Franklin grew up in Philadelphia, attended La Salle College High School, and was named to the 2013 PIAA AAAA All-State Team. He played in the Big 33 Football Classic. Standard recruiting story, on paper. What doesn’t show up in the recruiting database: in 2013, when Franklin was still a teenager preparing for his senior season, his mother Shelice Highsmith died after a brain tumor caused heart complications. Two months later, his grandmother Juanita Highsmith-Bailey died of kidney failure. An aunt stepped in as guardian. Franklin enrolled at Syracuse the following year.
He’s talked about that period in interviews without overdramatizing it, which says something about how he’s built. The foundation he later created, Shelice’s Angels, carries his mother’s name. He didn’t name it after himself.
Four Years at Syracuse – Including a Record That Stood Since 1896
Franklin played for the Orange from 2014 through 2017, appeared in 48 games, and recorded 311 career tackles. He made All-ACC twice. None of that is unusual for a linebacker who goes on to an NFL career.
What is unusual: he was named team captain three times, making him only the second three-time captain in Syracuse football history. The first was in 1896. That’s not a misprint. More than a century passed between the two.
He also dual-majored in finance and marketing management, which is relevant mainly because it tells you something about how he operates – not just on the field but organizationally. Shelice’s Angels didn’t build itself.
The Draft, the Debut, and Seven Years of Slow Accumulation
The Colts selected him 235th overall. In his rookie season he appeared in all 16 games, started two, and totaled 29 tackles. Useful depth. Nothing that made headlines.
By 2020 he was a team captain. That’s the detail worth pausing on – a player drafted in the seventh round, named captain in his third season, ahead of veterans who’d been in the league far longer. Indianapolis named him captain five more times after that, six total across 2020 through 2025.
The production followed the leadership. In 2022, he started all 17 games and finished with 167 total tackles, the second-most in a single season in Colts franchise history. Then he broke his own record in 2023 with 179 tackles and finished second in the league. Then he broke it again in 2024. At that point the Colts had a linebacker who had finished top-five in the NFL in tackles for three straight years – and he was the only player in the league to do that across that span.
The 2024 Season – What the Numbers Actually Show
173 combined tackles. League-leading. Five forced fumbles, which ranked second in the NFL. Two interceptions. 3.5 sacks. Eleven tackles for loss. He played every defensive snap for Indianapolis that season – not most, every single one – and then had ankle cleanup surgery in January.
The Associated Press named him second-team All-Pro. He went to his first Pro Bowl.
From 2022 through 2025, Franklin led the NFL in tackles with 643. He’s the only player since 2000 to record 600-plus tackles, 10-plus sacks, and 10-plus forced fumbles over any four-season stretch. Those three categories don’t usually belong to the same player. Tackles are volume. Sacks require pass-rush ability. Forced fumbles require finishing. Franklin has all three, which is why the “camp body” framing from 2018 looks so strange in retrospect.
He’s also missed one game due to injury in his entire career. One. Among all NFL linebackers since 2018, he ranks first in games played at 132.
The Trade to Green Bay – What Each Team Was Thinking
On March 7, 2026, the Colts traded Franklin to the Green Bay Packers in exchange for defensive tackle Colby Wooden. The deal was finalized March 11. Green Bay gave him a two-year contract worth $18 million.
The Packers needed a linebacker. Quay Walker, their previous starter, was heading elsewhere in free agency and commanding a price Green Bay wasn’t going to match. General manager Brian Gutekunst had apparently tried to acquire Franklin before – the fit wasn’t new thinking, just newly available.
From the Colts’ side, it’s harder to read cleanly. Franklin had one year left on his deal and had been the team’s best defensive player for three seasons. Indianapolis has missed the playoffs four straight years. Whether trading him was cap management or a signal about the direction of the rebuild is something Chris Ballard hasn’t explained directly, and Franklin, publicly at least, didn’t push back. “I don’t take it personal,” he said at a charity event in Indianapolis in April. “Chris has to make decisions, and I have to keep playing.” Eight years with one organization, handled without drama. That’s rarer than it sounds.
What Franklin Actually Does on a Football Field
He plays inside linebacker, reads run-pass keys quickly, and gets to the ball carrier before blockers can set. The tackle totals reflect range more than brute force – he’s 6-foot, 235 pounds, not physically imposing by NFL standards, but he processes the play fast enough that he doesn’t need to outmuscle anyone.
The forced-fumble numbers (11 over four seasons) come from something specific: he strips at contact instead of just wrapping up. It’s a technique that costs you tackles occasionally – a guy breaks free when you go for the ball instead of the body – but Franklin plays it aggressively and it works often enough to rank among the league’s best over that stretch.
Coverage has been the area scouts flag. In 2025 his coverage grade from PFF dipped, and that’s part of why Green Bay paired him with Edgerrin Cooper rather than just slotting him in as the solo answer. Cooper graded at 76.5 in coverage last season. The pairing addresses Franklin’s weaker side without asking him to change what he does well. Franklin’s read on it: “The first thing I told him when I got traded is that we’re going to be the best duo in the world.” Whether that holds up through a full season is unknown, but the construction makes structural sense.
Jonathan Gannon, a Familiar Face in an Unfamiliar Building
Green Bay’s defensive coordinator in 2026 is Jonathan Gannon, who spent 2018 through 2020 as the Colts’ defensive backs coach. He wasn’t Franklin’s direct position coach, but they were in the same building during Franklin’s development years. Gannon went from Indianapolis to Philadelphia as DC in 2021, then became Arizona’s head coach in 2023, then landed in Green Bay.
Franklin’s description of what the defense will look like under Gannon was short: “Fast and physical.” That’s not a particularly illuminating quote, but it matches what Gannon’s defenses have historically prioritized – aggressive, downhill, fewer zone-heavy schemes that would put more coverage responsibility on Franklin.
Why He Came to Green Bay Specifically
Franklin was direct about it. Jordan Love at quarterback. Micah Parsons on the defensive line. “When you’ve got a quarterback and you’ve got a pass rush, you’ve got a chance,” he said. That’s a clean articulation of how to evaluate a team if you’re a free agent or a trade target – not the market, not the contract, not the city. The structure of the roster.
He signed knowing Parsons might miss the start of the season after a 2025 injury. Green Bay also stumbled badly at the end of each of the last two years – a Wild Card exit in 2024 after a three-game losing streak, and a five-game collapse to end 2025. Franklin is 29. He’s in his prime. He didn’t leave Indianapolis to add to his tackle totals; he left to win something. The Packers are where he thinks that happens.
Shelice’s Angels – The Foundation Built From Personal Loss
Franklin founded Shelice’s Angels in 2019, six years after losing his mother. The organization focuses on young women in Philadelphia, specifically in areas of technology, academic achievement, and financial literacy. Programs include the Shelice’s Angels Business Academy and a mentorship initiative called Day in the Life.
In March 2025, the foundation held its inaugural Scholarship Gala at The Switch House in Philadelphia, timed to Women’s History Month. Mayor Cherelle Parker received the Beacon Award that evening. Philadelphia radio personality Patty Jackson attended. The foundation has worked with hundreds of young women across underserved neighborhoods in the city.
Franklin participated in the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats initiative four consecutive years, representing Shelice’s Angels in 2021 and 2022, the National Breast Cancer Foundation in 2023, and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 2024. The Colts nominated him for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 2023. He also organized a Tackles for Hunger event at the Lilly Boys and Girls Club in Indianapolis in April 2026 – weeks after being traded away from the city where he’d spent eight years.
The foundation’s name answers the question people sometimes ask about why he plays with such visible intensity. He said he was raised by two women who died before they could see what he became. Building something in their name isn’t a PR move. It’s the thing that makes the rest of it make sense.
The Record That Doesn’t Fit the Draft Story
Seventh-round picks don’t usually lead the league in tackles. They don’t usually get extended twice, first at $12 million over three years in 2022, then at $31.3 million in 2024. They don’t usually get traded to a Super Bowl contender and sign an $18 million deal at 29.
Franklin has missed one game in eight NFL seasons. He has 707 career tackles, 10 sacks, 11 forced fumbles, and three interceptions with Indianapolis alone. He was team captain for six consecutive years with an organization that drafted him as a depth piece. None of that is the seventh-round pick narrative. It’s also not luck or a favorable scheme – multiple coaches, multiple coordinators, and two separate contract negotiations all reached the same conclusion about what Franklin is worth.
The 2026 season will be the first time he plays regular-season football in a non-Colts uniform. He’s going to a team with a young quarterback who hasn’t won a playoff game since January 2024, a defensive star who may not be healthy to start the year, and a fanbase that’s been waiting for a Lombardi Trophy since the Favre era. Franklin said he’s ready to help lead them there. Given everything else on his record, betting against him on that seems unwise.
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