How rookie Skyler-Gill Howard has sprung to life for Lions

His first two snaps came between Aidan Hutchinson and Alim McNeill, on either end of the defensive line. His next came on third and long. Rushing with Hutchinson, McNeill and D.J. Wonnum, the rookie sixth-round pick was the first to get pressure on Tyler Shough and force an incomplete pass. If you had told Skyler Gill-Howard in training camp that he'd play 47 snaps in Week 1, "I’d be like, 'You’re trippin,'" he said.

About a month ago, Gill-Howard was just trying to make the team.

"The early days of camp I struggled," he said. "It was rough adjusting to the NFL speed, and I was trying to rush everything, especially when I hadn’t played football in 10 months. I was thinking I’m just gonna come back out here and everything’s going to click again. It didn’t."

Gill-Howard was trying to knock off the rust after season-ending ankle surgery last October and find his NFL footing at the same time. You could tell it wasn't easy, in that you couldn't notice him at all. Gill-Howard looked every bit as impactful in the early stages of camp as fellow rookie defensive lineman Tyre West, the seventh-round pick who never sniffed the 53-man roster and was released from the practice squad last week.

That was the direction Gill-Howard was trending when Kelvin Sheppard called him out in a defensive meeting shortly before the Lions' first preseason game.

"It was kind of my Welcome to the NFL moment," Gill-Howard said. "We’re in the unit meeting and he says, ‘Sky, I forgot you were even at practice.' I was like, damn. So I’m like, 'OK, I got something for that.'"

Gill-Howard had heard teammates get called out by Sheppard -- because nobody on Detroit's defense is safe -- but it obviously hits differently "when it's you," he said. "You really feel it. And I was pissed, honestly. But he knew what he was doing. That’s why he’s a great coach. He got the best out of me."

That night, Gill-Howard went back to his room in the team hotel and pulled up his tape from Northern Illinois, where he said he played in a "similar defense" to Detroit's. His two-year stint at NIU after starting his college career at Division II Upper Iowa is what led him to Texas Tech and ultimately onto NFL radars. He had a particularly strong season in 2024, especially as a pass-rusher.

Gill-Howard "looked at how fast I was playing" on film, he said, "and I was like, why would I ever come out here and be timid? Even if I’m fast and wrong, they’re still gonna love it, and that’s kind of what it was going forward. Now I’m fast and right."

The next day, Gill-Howard said he came to practice "not focused on anything else but dominating the man in front of me every play," he said. And that's what he's been doing since. He popped in the preseason opener against the Bengals, shined again a week later against the Commanders, and quickly climbed the ladder over the second half of camp.

The Lions were a heavy defense last season, in their scheme and personnel. They played a ton of base and deployed space-eaters on the interior of the defensive line like D.J. Reader and Roy Lopez. The defense was broken by year's end, with injuries in the secondary also also playing a role. They decided to get lighter in the trenches this offseason, valuing quickness over mass, in hopes of invigorating the pass rush.

"We wanted to add more juice and more ability to get after the quarterback this past cycle," Brad Holmes said at his end-of-camp press conference earlier this month.

The sacks said the Lions were getting home last season; they were tied for fourth in the NFL with 49. The time to quarterback pressure, in which they ranked last, said those sacks were just taking forever to develop. The Lions generated almost no pressure up the middle, especially with Alim McNeill playing at less than peak capacity as he returned from a torn ACL.

That's not sustainable in a league with so many lethal playmakers through the air. Holmes and the Lions saw Gill-Howard as a player who could help. He's undersized for a defensive tackle at 6'0, 280 -- which big Tyleik Williams likes to remind him of -- but he makes up for it with speed, burst and strong hands. Gill-Howard will remind you that he played running back in high school.

"When you watch his tape, my first thought was that he could be an impact – what do you call it -- DPR (designated pass-rusher) kind of sub-rusher," said Holmes. "And because of the innate violence that he's wired with, he's actually been a little bit better in the run game than probably what we even anticipated."

Gill-Howard knew he was going to play a role in the season-opener. He had established himself as part of Detroit's pass-rush rotation by the end of camp. And when the Saints wound up throwing 56 times after falling behind 21-0, it tracked that Gill-Howard was out there a lot. But 47 snaps? Only Hutchinson, McNeill and Wonnum logged more on the defensive line. If there was anything that caught him by surprise in his NFL debut, said Gill-Howard, it was "just the amount of reps I played."

"Obviously I have designated patches where I’m going in, so I wasn’t expecting to play that much, but they kind of changed around their gameplan and Shep was confident in me going in there and being able to stop the run if I needed to," Gill-Howard said. "It was great to see the trust he has in me."

Gill-Howard hadn't played that many snaps since exceeding 50 against Akron in his second season at NIU. That was two years ago. But it didn't feel like that many on Sunday to Gill-Howard, who said fatigue never set in: "Late in the fourth quarter I was still moving as fast as I was in the first." It must've been the adrenaline of his first NFL game coming down to the wire inside Ford Field, where the atmosphere was even better than he expected.

"Oh my god, it was crazy in there. I couldn’t even hear the call sometimes when we were on defense. We’re all like, 'What’s the call!? What’s the call!?!' Hutch is asking me for the call, I’m asking Mac, but that just shows the support we have in the den," he said.

Gill-Howard did lot of pass-rushing (31 snaps), and a little bit of everything. He went back and watched the film twice Sunday night and was "really happy with how I played in the run game, especially against 51 (Saints guard Cesar Ruiz), I know he's a great player in this league." He played as many snaps (11) in that department as Williams, who had a strong game himself, topped off by a crucial pressure on the deciding play in OT.

In the locker room after the Lions' win, Williams, who's 6'3, 325, looked over at Gill-Howard and grinned, "Lil Sky taking reps for me at 240." Gill-Howard shook his head with a laugh and said, "240 is craaaazy." The ribbing from Williams is actually a bit of a compliment, a roundabout way of saying that someone who moves that fast must be smaller than his listed weight. But Gill-Howard tells Williams to chill, "because it’s more impressive when you say 280 and he’s moving that fast."

The speed is real. Gill-Howard first flashed it in the preseason opener when Bengals quarterback Josh Johnson, who's no slouch with his legs, took off on third down and Gill-Howard got free of a double-team, shook off a hold and chased Johnson out of bounds short of the sticks. That moment stuck with Sheppard.

You might've noticed Gill-Howard dropping off the line into coverage a handful of times against the Saints. Some of those calls were spies, he said, designed to thwart Shough's mobility, and others were borne of Sheppard's belief that Gill-Howard was going to snag a pick. On one such call, Gill-Howard said Shough looked him right in the eyes and almost let it rip, before turning elsewhere and throwing incomplete.

"But we talked about that the whole week," said Gill-Howard. "Shep was like, 'Sky, we’re going to trust you to drop into coverage just to add that extra muddy presence. And it worked, for sure, he looked me off a bunch of times. He just thinks I have the speed because I hit 20 miles per hour in training camp, in full pads. He knows I can do it."

Most of all, though, Gill-Howard is here to get after the passer. And that's the one area where he felt like he could've done more in the opener. He laments one rush, in particular, where he got stuck and then driven to the other end of the line, where he almost took out Derrick Moore. Those are the plays where his size works against him. There are others where his quickness works to his advantage.

Gill-Howard would never tell him this personally -- not yet, anyway -- but he deserves an assist on Hutchinson's first sack of the game. While Hutchinson put the left tackle in a blender with a spin move, Gill-Howard worked through the right guard and was eventually occupying the guard, the right tackle and the center while Hutchinson took down Shough. (Hockey assist to Williams for beating the left guard taking away Shough's escape lane up the middle.)

"I told a bunch of my guys that were there, I’m like, 'Bro, Hutch got that sack because of me!' I won in the B gap and then the center came out of nowhere, I’m like, 'Bro, what is going on!?" Gill-Howard said with a laugh. "Credit to Hutch, though. He’s gonna make a play regardless, but I definitely forced (Shough) over there. But I won’t take credit for it. Next time I will."

On the whole, Gill-Howard "didn’t win as much as I’d like to" in the pass rush -- he finished with two QB pressures, per PFF -- "but I think it’s a good start and I’m headed in the right direction. ... I feel like I’m faster than a lot of guards in this league, so my confidence is at an all-time high, and it will always be like that."

Gill-Howard and the Lions will be back on the field in two days. He's cramming in as much film study and physical recovery as possible between now and Thursday night, when the Lions take on the Bills in the opening of Highmark Stadium. He's never had such little rest between games. (Those Tuesday and Wednesday Night MACtion games at NIU came with extra rest on either side.) This is all part of life in the NFL.

Gill-Howard smiled and said, "I’m excited to see how it goes. I'm excited to play Josh Allen, phenomenal quarterback in this league. That’s a guy you want to go against."