Photo by Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Taking a closer look at the evolution of the Grit Index—our improved character metric—for the 2025 NFL Draft class. The Grit index returns for the 2025 NFL Draft, marking its third evolution since its conception in 2023. For the Detroit Lions, “Grit” is a fundamental and defining role of the organization. “It’s our core foundation, men. Grit,” Campbell told the team during the season opener of HBO’s Hard Knocks series in 2022. “And what does it mean? Really, in a nutshell, I think it means this: we’re going to go a little bit longer, we’ll push a little harder, and we’ll think a little deeper, and a little sharper. To me, it means, we’ll play you anywhere. We’ll play you on grass, we’ll play you on turf, we’ll go to an (explicative) landfill. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you have one ass cheek and three toes, I’ll beat your ass.” As important as Grit is to the Lions, it can be difficult for those outside the organization to identify. Two years ago, a conversation with my buddy Anthony (@Btwn_TheNumbers on Twitter) sparked the idea of creating a system that would try to quantify what Grit means for the Lions. Initially, our initial grit index focused on searching through draft profiles and trying to identify a handful of keywords that were associated with NFL Draft prospects. We simply made a list of list of players we thought matched the criteria, and of the Lions’ eight-man draft class, four of them made our list. The next year, we expanded our search terms for the 2024 Grit Index and paid closer attention to phrases being assigned to players, as well as the frequency at which it happened. We also created a tier-based system to help further separate the prospects. In the Lions’ six-man draft class, five of their draft picks were on our list—including two Tier 1 players. And when you consider there were only 12 Tier 1 players in the entire class, we felt like we were moving in the right direction. In 2025, we’ve taken the Grit Index up a few notches First, instead of relying solely on key terms, we streamlined our focus on six categories: Passion, Work Ethic, Dependability, Toughness, Intelligence, and Leadership. Next, we expanded our source pool dramatically, relying on a plethora of analysts to provide context on players, hoping to add different perspectives. In an effort to not flood the pool with unreliable sources, we added a layer of accountability to different writers, assigning them a score and weighing their opinions differently. For example, The Athletic’s Dane Brugler is one of the most respected draft analysts in the game and his opinion holds a higher value than a lower-tier analyst—so we applied the same concept to our index. Over the past several months, Anthony and I have collected data on the upcoming draft prospects, dropped the data into an Excel document, and created weighted scores based on the analysts providing the information. Once we had arrived at our final raw data scores, we scaled it out on a 0-100 point system, so that it would be easier for the reader to consume. Unveiling the final results As we progress toward the 2025 NFL Draft, we will be releasing the Grit Index results for different position groups at Pride of Detroit. Up first, we’ll look at all the offensive skills players in this draft cycle, then move into the trenches, and spend a bit more time sorting through the defensive position groups. While we’ll just be publishing the 0-100 Grit Index scores (with some written context) for prospects at Pride of Detroit, I will announce (on social media) a way for readers to get a look at all the data we used, for those interested. ...read more read less