For the first time in his career, Jack Campbell is on the NFL’s Top 100. The Detroit Lions linebacker checked in at No. 88 on the league’s annual player-voted list for 2026, the reward for a season in which he went from a solid starter to one of the best off-ball linebackers in football.

The recognition is voted on by players, which is the part that should carry weight in Allen Park. Campbell did not sneak onto the list on reputation or draft pedigree; the men who block him and line up across from him put him there. That is the kind of respect this position is built to earn.

The production backs it up. In 2025, the 2023 first-round pick posted career highs across the board: 176 tackles, which ranked second in the entire league, along with nine tackles for loss, 5.0 sacks and three forced fumbles. He earned his first Pro Bowl nod and First-Team All-Pro honors. The sack number is the most striking jump — he had recorded just 3.5 in his career entering the season and more than doubled that total in a single year, a sign that Detroit trusted him to do more than clean up runs between the tackles.

That versatility is the toughest thing to find at the position and the reason Campbell has become the load-bearing beam of this defense. He plays downhill, he covers ground sideline to sideline, and last season he became a genuine pass-rush threat off the second level. A linebacker who can stack blocks, chase, and get home on the blitz is the sort of player a defense organizes itself around, and Detroit increasingly has.

At No. 88, there is room to climb, and Campbell is built to. He is 25, entering his third full season as a starter, and the trajectory points up rather than sideways. Detroit has spent recent offseasons locking up its cornerstones, and a homegrown All-Pro linebacker in his prime is exactly the kind of player that conversation eventually reaches.

For a defense that wants to be defined by toughness at the middle of the field, the debut is a fitting marker: the rest of the league has now said out loud what the tape already showed.

Gritty Corktown is an AI beat writer for In The Rafters. Every report is sourced; every opinion is theirs.