Peter Skoronski was Northwestern’s 1st 5-star football recruit a year ago. After a decorated freshman season, ‘the sky’s the limit’ for the offensive tackle.

Peter Skoronski checked all of Kurt Anderson’s boxes.

Anderson, Northwestern’s offensive line coach, looks for certain qualities when recruiting high school prospects: fierce passion for playing the position, great character off the field and strong communication skills.

Skoronski’s tape spoke volumes — his athleticism and his love for the game jumped out immediately. Anderson visited Skoronski’s high school, Maine South in Park Ridge, and everyone he spoke to raved about Skoronski’s character. He and Skoronski had great conversations about what the offensive lineman was looking for in a program.

“When you start building that relationship and you understand his personality and what his individual goals are … you realize that this guy was a perfect fit for the culture of this program,” Anderson said. “But probably more so, the culture that we’re trying to build within the offensive lineman.”

Luckily for Anderson, Skoronski agreed.

He committed to Northwestern on May 4, 2019, picking the Wildcats over powerhouse programs such as Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State — a massive win for an NU program trying to garner more national recognition. 247 Sports rated Skoronski as a five-star prospect, making him the first five-star recruit Northwestern signed out of high school in program history.

As the Wildcats prepare to put the finishing touches on their 2021 recruiting class during national signing day Wednesday, they will be hard-pressed to get the kind of immediate impact Skoronski provided in the 2020 class.

Rashawn Slater was expected to anchor the offensive line in 2020 at left tackle, but the pandemic altered his plans. Slater, a likely first-round pick, opted out of the season in August to prepare for the NFL draft and left a massive void at left tackle.

Yet Skoronski made the gap unnoticeable. He made the 2020 FWAA Freshman All-America team and the All-Big Ten second team.

Many high school evaluators rated Skoronski as an elite interior lineman. Allen Trieu, who covers Midwest football recruiting for 247, said Skoronski showed the positional versatility in high school to play center, guard or tackle. But Trieu didn’t expect him to play left tackle — typically the most important position on the line — in his first year.

“We knew that he could probably play tackle in a pinch,” Trieu said. “But I would be lying to you if we thought he was going to come in and start as a freshman at tackle.”

Football in his genes

Maine South coach Dave Inserra remembers the first time he watched Skoronski play football. Skoronski, then a freshman on the Maine South sophomore team, hadn’t played a lot of football up to that point — his dad didn’t let him start playing tackle football until middle school.

But the second he stepped on the field as a high schooler, he was a natural.

His football IQ was evident immediately. He knew all the right angles to take, set up correctly in pass protection and played with aggression from the jump.

“He’s a freshman playing against sophomores and just putting kids on their back,” Inserra said. “There was no doubt in my mind he was a top-20 college, top-20 type of player.”

Football ability runs through Skoronski’s DNA. His grandfather, Bob Skoronski, was a starting lineman and captain for all five of Vince Lombardi’s NFL championship teams with the Green Bay Packers. His dad, Bob Jr., played defensive line at Yale.

But his rise to become one of the best linemen in the country started because of his extreme work ethic. Skoronski never took shortcuts, according to Inserra, and went above and beyond to do more than was expected of him.

That included helping his teammates too. Inserra said Skoronski’s leadership abilities were evident all along, but Skoronski found his voice as a junior.

“He literally would coach the entire offensive line,” Inserra said. “Everyone looked up to him because you couldn’t find things wrong with him. … The kids really respected him. If he said something, they were all ears.”

Inserra told recruiters when Skoronski was a freshman that he was a shoo-in top prospect for their programs. A lot of college recruiters hear that from high school coaches, but Inserra knew what he saw.

A few years later, he was telling a lot of recruiters, “I told you so.”

Hard to find

Inserra had to break it to Western Michigan offensive coordinator Jake Moreland.

It was Skoronski’s sophomore year, and Moreland had given him his first Division I scholarship offer. But realistically, Inserra knew the Broncos wouldn’t be in contention.

“I told Coach Moreland, ‘You’re not going to have a chance,’ ” Inserra said. “He said, ‘OK, we’re going to offer him.’ He jokingly looked at (Skoronski) and said, ‘Hey, you remember who offered you first.’ ”

Skoronski is big in stature — in high school he stood 6-foot-4 and weighed 275 pounds (Northwestern now lists him at 294). But for a big man, he wasn’t easy to track down.

Social media has created a trend for most highly touted high school athletes — get an offer, post it on Twitter. Skoronski wasn’t like most of his peers.

From January 2019 until he committed on May 4, 2019, he tweeted 10 times. Six were retweets of his teammates, two were about basketball, one was about his grandfather and the last was his commitment tweet.

It was hard to pin down exactly when Skoronski’s offers started. The only time Trieu and his colleagues would find out was in person at camps or high school practices.

It wasn’t ideal for Trieu’s job, but he found it refreshing.

“We kind of liked that,” Trieu said. “Even though it was to our detriment, we were like, ‘That’s how offensive lineman should be built,’ right? The guy doesn’t really love the spotlight, not really searching for attention, lunch pail kind of guy.”

According to his 247 Sports recruiting profile, Skoronski had nine offers, but Inserra said he had at least 30.

Historic programs such as Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State came calling, as did Stanford and Iowa, both renowned for producing top offensive linemen. Inserra said Skoronski wasn’t looking for a flashy school or one that flaunted its old championship trophies.

Instead, he wanted a coach who would be straightforward with him and do a great job of making him a better lineman, and Anderson caught his eye.

It helped that Anderson and Inserra grew up together — Inserra’s best friend in high school dated Anderson’s sister. Anderson’s familiarity with the area, having played at Glenbrook South, was another plus.

He was able to keep Skoronski close to home by pitching top-notch athletics and academics as well as a commitment to helping Skoronski grow as a football player and person.

“It’s like that with every guy that I recruit,” Anderson said. “When they commit to here, it’s like we’re going on this adventure together. We’re going to do this together and build both as a player and as a student together. … That’s kind of how it went.”

Skoronski committed during his junior year, and by the time he was a senior, he was a four-star recruit with the opportunity to prove himself at the Under Armour All-America Game. Against the best of the best, Skoronski stood out and earned his fifth star from 247.

“We got to see him practice and go against other top players from around the country,” Trieu said. “He not only held his own, he was one of the top guys there that week. That was when we really felt confident that he belonged at the very highest levels of college football.”

‘The sky’s the limit’

With Northwestern’s best lineman opting out in the summer, Anderson had to find the best five who could help the team succeed.

Skoronski showed early in camp that he wasn’t your average true freshman. Practice after practice, Anderson recognized both his mental and physical maturity for his age. He showed off his positional versatility early on.

Inserra said he believed all along Skoronski would win a starting spot, even with little on-field time due to the pandemic. The additional time with the Big Ten not opening its season until late October allowed Anderson to work with Skoronski on his technique, and he improved vastly by the time the season came around.

Skoronski starting at left tackle wasn’t the plan heading into the season, but Anderson knew he could trust him.

“I always tell my guys, the expectation is on the position,” Anderson said. “I told him early on that you’re not trying to fill Rashawn Slater’s shoes. The expectation is what the expectation is for a left tackle at Northwestern. Go play left tackle and meet the expectations of what it is. You go do that, and everything’s going to be fine.”

He played at an elite level, giving up two sacks in nearly 600 snaps and earning the highest grade of any true freshman in the Big Ten, according to Pro Football Focus.

Anderson was proud of Skoronski’s achievements as a freshman, but he said one lineman’s success is the result of every player on the line. It helped that he had a savvy veteran in senior guard Nik Urban for support. Skoronski was fortunate to play alongside four upperclassmen on the line.

Skoronski, as well as talented players coming in and those already on the roster, has Anderson excited about the line’s future. The Wildcats signed three offensive linemen in December, including four-star tackle Caleb Tiernan, and are hoping to add another four-star Wednesday in Austin Uke of Dallas.

According to Anderson, Skoronski has only scratched the surface of his potential, and the same goes for his teammates. So just how good can Skoronski be?

“It always comes down to their work ethic and what they’re willing to put into it,” Anderson said. “Everything in his background and everything that he’s done to date says that he’s not going to stop continuing to work.

“The sky’s the limit for him.”