Alohi
Gilman.
Alohi
Gilman.
Notre Dame· 5'10"· 201 lb· 4.60s 40
"Gilman was the kind of late safety pick teams keep making because every so often the aggression and the football character outrun the athletic testing that pushed him to the sixth round."Pre-draft read
Gilman is a downhill strong safety who plays the game at one temperature. He triggers the instant a run declares, fills with real force from depth, and finishes tackles at the line of scrimmage instead of riding ball carriers down. The tackle production at Notre Dame — 95 in one season, a bowl-record 19 in a single game — came from that willingness to be the eighth man in the box on every snap.
The second layer is ball awareness. He reads route concepts from the post, breaks on the throw, and has a genuine knack for punching the ball out, with six forced fumbles across two Notre Dame seasons. He is not a long, rangy centerfielder and he will not run with a vertical slot in man coverage. What separates him is tempo and instinct, not speed.
Two-high defense that plays its strong safety close to the line and uses him in the run fit and underneath zones
Year 1 core special-teams contributor and third safety in big personnel; ceiling is a multi-year starting box safety in a two-high structure.
A defense that asks its safeties to be interchangeable and play true single-high, where he would be isolated in space against vertical speed.
Alohi Gilman Highlights
Notre Dame official cutup of the downhill trigger and finishing tackles that defined his two seasons in South Bend.
The Human Missile: Notre Dame Safety Alohi Gilman Highlights
A full career reel built around the hitting and ball-stripping that produced six forced fumbles with the Irish.
Alohi Gilman 2018-2019 Highlight Mix
Both Notre Dame seasons together, including the Syracuse two-interception game and the record bowl performance.
Gilman took an unusual road. He started 12 of 14 games as a freshman at Navy in 2016, finishing second on the team with 76 tackles and earning ECAC Rookie of the Year honors, then transferred to Notre Dame and sat out 2017 as the defensive scout team player of the year. Once eligible he started every game for two years: 95 tackles, three tackles for loss, two interceptions and three forced fumbles in 2018, then 74 tackles, a sack, an interception and three more forced fumbles as a 2019 captain.
His identity was a box safety with a takeaway habit. He was a Walter Camp national defensive player of the week after a two-interception game against Syracuse, set a Notre Dame bowl record with 19 tackles against Clemson, and entered his senior year on the Thorpe and Nagurski watch lists as a preseason second-team AP All-American. The flag was range: at 5-foot-10 and 202 pounds he was a strong safety without the speed to play single-high, and teams questioned how much coverage he could handle in a league moving toward interchangeable safeties.
Boards had him as a fifth-to-sixth-round strong safety with special-teams value and a leadership premium. The Chargers took him at 186 as a depth piece behind an established safety room.
- 01
Downhill trigger
he diagnoses run keys fast and arrives with force from depth, the trait that produced 95 tackles in a single Notre Dame season.
- 02
Ball-stripping habit
six forced fumbles across two seasons with the Irish, a repeatable skill rather than a couple of lucky punches.
- 03
Tackling reliability
he finishes at the line instead of dragging ball carriers, a rare consistency for a safety asked to fill from eight yards deep.
- 04
Football character
a captain at Notre Dame after a Navy transfer and a scout-team player of the year award, with universal reviews as a culture-setter.
- 05
Route recognition
reads concepts from the post and breaks early on throws underneath, which is how he turned three interceptions into real coverage value.
- 01
Coverage range
at 5-foot-10 with average long speed he cannot cover half a field alone, which caps him as a single-high free safety.
- 02
Man coverage limits
asked to run with a vertical slot or an athletic tight end he loses separation late and has to grab to recover.
- 03
Size at the point
he takes on lead blockers with pure aggression rather than mass, which lets bigger blockers wall him out of the fit.
- 04
Angles at full speed
the same trigger that makes him productive can carry him past the ball on cutback runs when he commits too early.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.60sp50
- Vertical
- 32inp50
- Broad jump
- 119inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.81sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.08sp50
- Bench
- 17repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Navy | 14 | 76 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 |
| 2018 | Notre Dame | 13 | 95 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 3 |
| 2019 | Notre Dame | 13 | 74 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Career | — | 40 | 245 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 7 |
USA TODAY Sports season lines cross-checked against Notre Dame and Navy team releases; the three seasons sum exactly to the 40-game, 245-tackle, three-interception, 12-pass-defensed, seven-forced-fumble career total, and the 169 Notre Dame tackles match the Chargers draft-day release. He transferred from Navy and did not play in 2017, which is why no line appears for that year. Navy did not publish his tackles for loss or Notre Dame his 2018 fumble recoveries, so those cells and the corresponding career totals are left unreported rather than guessed.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Physical box safety who earns a starting role and a second contract while staying limited in deep coverage.
Undersized safety with elite instincts who becomes a long-term starter and takeaway producer in a two-high defense.
Aggressive late-round safety whose value stays concentrated on special teams without a defensive role emerging.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Gilman needed three seasons to become a starter and then never stopped being one. He played 15 games as a rookie in 2020 with one start and seven tackles, largely on special teams. In 2021 he made 11 appearances with three starts and 42 tackles, in 2022 he played all 17 with five starts and 58 tackles plus an interception, then broke through in 2023 with 14 starts, 73 tackles, two interceptions, 10 passes defensed and three forced fumbles. The Chargers re-signed him to a multi-year deal in March 2024, and he started 11 more games that season before an injured-reserve stint. Los Angeles traded him to Baltimore in October 2025, where he started all 12 of his games, and he signed with Kansas City in March 2026.
In hindsight this is one of the better value picks of the 2020 sixth round. Gilman was drafted as a special-teams body with questionable range and turned into a multi-year NFL starter who earned a second contract from the team that drafted him, then remained a starter through two more stops. The coverage limitations scouts flagged were real — he is still a box-first safety — but he built a role around what he does well and never came off the field once he got it.