Six years. Twenty Contracts. One Start.
This NFL's best story is a 28-year-old rookie offensive lineman.
On a day in which the Detroit Lions rookie Aidan Hutchinson recorded three sacks in the first half, quarterback Jared Goff tossed four touchdowns, and receiver Amon Ra St. Brown tallied 184 all-purpose yards, the player who received the game ball and was the first to address the media was a 28-year-old rookie offensive lineman who looks like he could be a high school football assistant coach. Dan Skipper stood in front of reporters and declared, “It's been such a long road.”
Talk about an understatement.
Since graduating from the University of Arkansas in 2017, Skipper has been on the practice squads for six different NFL teams. He’s done everything he was asked to do. Didn’t matter. His opportunity never came. “It’s tough,” he said. “You go in, and you’re never quite good enough. You’re not quite enough. You show up every day and you think you’re doing the right things and just for whatever reason, it just doesn’t quite work out. I think I’ve had 20 NFL contracts. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on.”
But when he joined head coach Dan Campbell’s Lions, with the emphasis on grit and accountability, Skipper found a spot where he could excel. He toiled away on the practice squad last season, learning the offense, and in training camp this summer, he thought he would make the team. And so it came as a shock when Campbell called Skipper into his office to tell him that he was being cut, relegated back down to the practice squad. Skipper couldn’t hide his tears. “Anything I can do…?” he asked the coach.
All Skipper needed, it turns out, was just a little bit more patience. Last week, when the team’s starting offensive line was decimated with injuries, they searched for somebody to fill in at left guard. Skipper hadn’t played guard since college, but no matter. He had learned the position anyways, just in case. Campbell called him up to the active roster. "We just felt like he was going to hold up, you know,” said Campbell. “We trust him. I trust him."
Skipper wasn’t just going to be on the sideline in case of emergency. In his first NFL game ever, he was going to start.
Skipper quickly made the most of his moment against the Washington Commanders. In the first quarter, he drove his man back nearly 15 yards to set up a 50-yard D’Andre Swift scamper to put the team in scoring position. The Lions won 36-27, their first win of the season. They exploded on offense for 425 total yards, almost 200 of which came on the ground.
"We only go as far as the O-line takes us,” said Swift after the game.
In the locker room, Campbell addressed the team. “Hey, Skip!” he said. “Nice freaking job, man.” And before the coach could say anything else, the rest of the team erupted in cheers that soon turned into chants: “Skip! Skip! Skip!” It didn’t take long before the 6’9” 300-pound giant started to cry.
"We’re all the next ones up," Skipper told the press. "We’re not the chosen ones, so to speak, but at the end of the day, we go out there and get a win, and that’s all that matters."
Some time later, still trying to convince himself that it wasn’t a dream, Skipper said, “It's hard to explain. It kinda makes everything all worth it. All the chaos…it's kinda the cherry on top."
For one day at least, Dan Skipper was an NFL player—he was the heart of a winning team. But really, what he did last Sunday wasn’t all that different from what’s he’s done for the last six years: he put his head down. He went to work. He led by example.
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