Sixth-round pick Skyler Gill-Howard should be your new favorite Lion

I’m about to break conventions of journalism a bit here, but everyone else is doing it, so why not?

I’m not supposed to play favorites when it comes to talking about players I am supposed to cover in an objective manner. It could impact my ability to stay impartial or view things clearly. But it’s always been difficult in this position to not blur the lines between reporter and fan. So, let’s just throw caution to the wind here.

Detroit Lions sixth-round pick Skyler Gill-Howard is one of my favorite Lions players already, and he should be one of yours, too.

Let’s start with his insane journey to the NFL.

In high school, Gill-Howard played both linebacker and running back. He also joined the wrestling team to help with conditioning, promptly won the JV state title. The next two years as an upperclassman, he finished runner-up in states in back-to-back seasons.

“He had great speed, moved really well and was really flexible for a guy his size,” his high school coach Mike Weller said. “Then you kind of realized he has a unique ability to learn. Some people, it might take 100 reps to get something close to being down. He can translate what you’re saying into his skill set faster than almost anyone else.”

But football was his passion. With the Greenfield Hawks football team, he became a three-time captain, four-time all-conference, and just a standout player. Unfortunately, most of that went overlooked by colleges. He didn’t find much success in the recruiting, only receiving DII offers while trying to navigate a COVID-interrupted process.

So Gill-Howard settled for a walk-on role at DII school Upper Iowa. His career didn’t take off there. He played in just four games and had three tackles. And that was it. He had no interest in barely playing for a D2 school. So he threw his name back into the transfer portal hoping to find an offer from a higher level competition.

In the meantime, he quickly moved on in life. As a self-man made, he started working at FedEx at a nearby airport, and went back to his high school to coach track—at 20 years old. Unfortunately, the offers didn’t come in right away.

“I almost threw in the towel playing football completely. I didn’t want to go DII or DIII, no disrespect to that, but I just knew how I was meant for more and meant for this moment,” Gill-Howard said.

The connections he made in high school finally paid off. Some of his teammates at Northern Illinois advocated for him, and on the very last day of recruitment, the NIU Huskies offered him a walk-on role—but just one caveat: could you play defensive tackle instead of linebacker?

That’s all Gill-Howard needed to hear. He chased his passion by putting on 50 pounds in four months. And while he didn’t appear in any games for Northern Illinois his first year, he learned from the sidelines, and spent his weekends working and FedEx and training with his trainer.

When he finally saw the field in 2023, he didn’t waste the opportunity. He played in every game as a rotational player, racking up 24 tackles, 4 tackles for loss—and he posted at least one stop in each of Northern Illinois’ last 12 games—all while earning Academic All-MAC honors.

Then as a more featured player in 2024—that’s when things really blew up. He produced 52 tackles, 8 tackles for loss, and 5.0 sacks. He was named third-team All-MAC (second-team by PFF), earned a spot as a team captain, and earned the team’s Burlsworth Trophy nomination for most outstanding walk-on.

Still knowing that his football career was destined for more, he entered the transfer portal in 2025, hoping to land with a bigger program on a bigger stage. This time, he didn’t have to wait for the calls to come in. Per Dane Brugler, more than 25 teams came calling, including Alabama and “other SEC programs.” He landed in Texas Tech, became the first person in his family to graduate from college, and made an immediate impact on the eam.

His breakout game came just two weeks into the season. A four-tackle performance—including one tackle for loss—was capped by a 55-yard interception return in a blowout win over Kent State.

Just three years after considering retiring from football entirely, he was named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Week.

While an ankle injury cut his 2025 season short after just six games, Gill-Howard had put enought good film and perseverance out there to hear his name called this past week when the Detroit Lions took him with their sixth-round pick.

If that story isn’t enough, go watch his introductory press conference just minutes after being drafted. There, he told two more heartwarming stories to further endear him to the fanbase. The first was just an incredible moment of fate. While many draft prospects opt to bring 32 hats to the draft parties so they can quickly don the hat of their new team, Gill-Howard only had a Lions hat. Not because he had a feeling the Lions were going to draft him. Because, in his opinion, it was destiny.

“I didn’t have time to go grab the hats and nobody else did. So my grandfather, big Detroit fan, he walked up to me, he said, ‘Look at my hat, only hat in the room. It’s meant to be,’” Gill-Howard explained. “So my grandfather gave me this hat. I told him I’m going to get a new one when I get up there. I’m going to send him one, but I’ve got to keep this one.”

The other story involved tragedy. Gill-Howard, the oldest of eight siblings, lost a brother when he was shot and killed in 2022. He credited his brother with helping him become the man he is today, and on Saturday, Gill-Howard sat waiting for his name to be called with a photo of his brother by his side.

“Before the Draft started, I went out there to his grave and I just sat with him for a while, talked to him,” Gill-Howard said. “And it just means everything because – I mean, I told him whenever my time was to go to the league, he would come with me to get him out of the situation that he was in. So he’s still going to come with me, just obviously not physically.”

If you are somehow not yet convinced that Gill-Howard should be your favorite player, let’s move to the actual field. All the grit, determination, effort, and hard work? It POPS off the tape. He chasing down running backs as the backside defender. He’s trying a second, third, and fourth pass rush move, if necessary. To him, the play doesn’t end when the whistle blows, there’s a couple extra seconds of effort to still give after that.

And he’s also got some damn-intriguing physical traits. He moves with the suddenness and instincts of his linebacker history—but at 280 pounds. His wrestling backup shows up in his aggressive and effective hands. You can literally see every step of his journey influencing his tape.

Gill-Howard projects to be a late-down three-tech—a much-needed role in the Lions’ pass-rush needy defense. In college, he managed to raise the bar of his game with every jump in competition. And with him still very new to the position, the ceiling on his potential is as high as his determination will take him. If his history is any indication, I’m not counting anything out.