Beyond the 53: How the Lions use the practice squad as a working roster

In the six days before Sunday’s opener against New Orleans, three Lions received the news every practice-squad player waits for.

Detroit signed linebacker Joe Bachie to the 53-man roster on Sept. 7 and receiver Tom Kennedy three days later. On Saturday, the Lions elevated defensive lineman Ben Stille for the game.

The shorthand was the same: All three had been called up. The paperwork — and what it meant for each player — was not.

Bachie and Kennedy signed new active-roster contracts. Their moves placed them on the 53, although neither transaction guaranteed how long they would stay there. Stille remained on his practice-squad deal and joined the Active/Inactive List for one game. His compensation for the week rose to the applicable active-roster minimum, and the NFL’s elevation rule called for him to return to the practice squad on the first business day after the game without passing through waivers.

That distinction can disappear inside a Saturday roster announcement. For the player, it is the difference between a temporary opportunity and a new contract. For the Lions, it is one of the basic tools used to get through an NFL season.

The roster beneath the roster

From the start of the 2020 season through the end of 2025, Detroit made 261 documented moves from the practice squad to either the game-day list or the permanent active roster. The moves involved 108 players.

The Lions made 32 of those moves in 2020, 50 in 2021, 44 in 2022, 45 in 2023, 49 in 2024 and 41 in 2025. That is an average of 43.5 moves per season, with the pandemic-affected 2021 season producing the high.

The volume does not prove that Detroit used the practice squad more aggressively or more effectively than the rest of the NFL. No reliable league-wide comparison has been established. It does show that the group beneath the 53-man roster was involved in the weekly operation far more often than a casual scan of the depth chart would suggest.

The six-season ledger contains four different kinds of moves: 154 standard regular-season elevations, 18 COVID-19 replacement elevations, seven postseason elevations and 82 permanent signings from Detroit’s practice squad.

Those categories matter. Before the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, a team that wanted to use a practice-squad player in a game had to sign him to the active roster. Getting him back to the practice squad required another transaction and could expose him to waivers.

The standard elevation created a shorter route. A player can be added to the Active/Inactive List without terminating his practice-squad contract. The same club could use that option twice per player in 2020 and 2021; a 2022 rule change raised the regular-season limit to three. Postseason elevations are tracked separately in the Detroit ledger.

Practice-squad signings, releases, injured-list moves and automatic reversions are part of the churn, too. They do not count as trips up.

When the mechanism becomes a football story

Dan Skipper supplied the clearest example in September 2022.

With guards Jonah Jackson and Halapoulivaati Vaitai unavailable, Detroit elevated Skipper before its Week 2 game against Washington. The veteran tackle made his first NFL start at left guard and played 61 offensive snaps in a 36–27 win. Afterward, Dan Campbell singled him out in the locker room while teammates chanted his name.

The transaction was temporary even if the moment did not feel that way. Skipper returned to the practice squad under the elevation rule, then moved up again for the following week’s game at Minnesota. On Oct. 1, the Lions signed him to the active roster.

That sequence — elevate, revert, elevate, sign — is the system in miniature. It also helps explain why one answer to “How many times was he called up?” can be misleading.

Across the Detroit career histories covered by this project, Skipper leads the tracked players with 13 upward trips. Only seven were standard elevations. The other six were permanent signings from the practice squad, including two that occurred before the temporary mechanism existed.

Calling all 13 “elevations” would turn two different transactions into one.

Familiar names, different paths

Kennedy and tight end Shane Zylstra are tied behind Skipper with 10 upward trips apiece, but they reached that number in different ways.

Kennedy was elevated four times and signed from Detroit’s practice squad six times. His broader transaction history is busier still: 11 signings onto the practice squad and 11 waivers or releases from August 2019 through Sept. 12, 2026. Those moves do not increase his trip total, but they capture the uncertainty that follows a player living at the roster line.

Zylstra’s path leaned more heavily on temporary work. Eight of his 10 trips were elevations — five standard and three as a COVID-19 replacement — and two were permanent signings. Detroit used the three COVID replacements in consecutive weeks in December 2021. Zylstra appeared in all three games. He reverted under the elevation rule after the first two and moved to the practice squad/injured list after the third.

Career leaders among the 110 players in the expanded Detroit dataset through Sept. 12, 2026. Combined trips are not elevation-only totals.

Kicker Michael Badgley, linebacker Anthony Pittman, defensive lineman Chris Smith and receiver Maurice Alexander follow with six combined trips each. Their totals contain different mixtures of elevations and signings, another reminder that the transaction label matters as much as the number.

The original 261-trip count covers the Lions’ documented team-wide activity during the first six seasons of the elevation era. Researchers then checked the eligible pre-2020 Detroit histories of players in that group and found seven earlier permanent signings. Bachie, Kennedy and Stille added three more moves in September 2026.

That brought the expanded file to 271 trips involving 110 tracked players through Sept. 12. It is not a complete count of every Lions practice-squad promotion in franchise history, and it should not be presented as one.

Campbell has spoken about needing the entire active roster and practice squad — all 69 players — to survive a season. The ledger puts scale behind that point. The 53-man roster may be the one printed on Sunday morning, but it is not the only roster doing the work.

How this data was compiled

The team-wide portion covers every documented Detroit move from the practice squad to the game-day list or active roster from the start of the 2020 season through the end of 2025. Permanent signings were checked against the Lions’ official transaction pages. Because those pages generally omit temporary elevations, game-day moves were compiled from team announcements, Active/Inactive reports and contemporaneous coverage.

Historical searches covered eligible seasons from 2010 through 2019 for the pre-2020 players in the six-season group, along with complete Detroit histories for Skipper and Kennedy. The file also includes verified 2026 activity through Sept. 12, before the Week 1 game.

Of the 271 trips, 244 are Confirmed and 27 are Probable under the project’s source standard. Every trip attributed to Skipper, Kennedy and Zylstra is Confirmed. Player names were normalized across sources, and automatic practice-squad reversions were not counted as additional upward trips.