According to UFL journalist James Larsen, the Detroit Lions are signing two new wide receivers—both fresh off of winning the UFL Championship over the past weekend. Lucky Jackson and Tarik Black have agreed to join Detroit, although those signings are not yet official.
This past UFL season, Jackson and Black ranked second and third on the Louisville Kings in receiving yards, helping the team go 6-4 in the regular season—including six wins in their final seven games. Jackson finished with a team-high 32 reception to go with 392 yards and two touchdowns. Black pitched in 27 catches for 388 yards and three touchdowns. Jackson also served as the team’s primary punt returner, avering 11.9 yards on nine attempts.
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Black, 28, went undrafted in 2021 after splitting his time in college at Michigan and Texas. He bounced around in the NFL, having short stints with the Colts, Jets, Ravens, Steelers, and Dolphins. However, he has only made one NFL game appearance—a Week 18 game in his rookie season in which he caught a single pass on two targets.
At 6-foot-3, 213 pounds, Black adds some much-needed size to the Lions’ wide receiver room. In fact, only Isaac TeSlaa (6-foot-4, 214) measures in bigger than him.
Jackson went undrafted in 2020, but his football route first took him to the CFL, where he played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Edmonton Elks, but only appeared in a single game in the Canadian league.
After that stint, he went to the XFL and thrived, posting 36 catches for 573 yards and five touchdowns in a single season. That led to him being named All-XFL, and he parlayed that into an opportunity with the Minnesota Vikings in 2023. He initially survived training camp, and spent most of the season on the practice squad—getting three brief call-ups and seeing mostly special teams work. He spent all of 2024 on the Vikings’ practice squad, and was cut from the team entirely in September of 2025, before moving to the UFL.
The Draft Wire has a nice interview/profile of Jackson from back in 2020, where he claims his football IQ and work ethic are his biggest strengths.
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The two will now joint a spirited competition among Detroit’s receiving depth. While Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, and Isaac TeSlaa are undoubtedly safe, there are no guarantees for the rest of the depth, especially after rookie Kendrick Law suffered a torn ACL earlier this offseason. That includes Greg Dortch, Dominic Lovett, Jackson Meeks, Tom Kennedy, and Cedrick Wilson, among others.
Detroit had a few vacancies on their 90-man roster, so no corresponding moves are necessary, but we’ll see if the Lions have any more transactions when they make it official.
