In a sport where most Division I football players start suiting up before they lose their baby teeth, John Michael Gyllenborg is an anomaly. In an exclusive interview with PFSN, the Wyoming tight end opens up on a journey that might never have been, and a future that remains very much still to be written.
John Michael Gyllenborg’s Winding Road to the 2026 Senior Bowl
While he takes to the Senior Bowl with NFL aspirations this week, the Wyoming tight end didn’t touch a helmet until his senior year of high school.
No Pop Warner, no Friday night lights under the Leawood, Kansas sky, no family legacy of gridiron glory. In fact, football was practically forbidden in the Gyllenborg household.
“My mom never let me play because my grandpa didn’t want me to,” Gyllenborg recalled. “So football was just not part of my life growing up. I didn’t have any desire to do it.”
Basketball was the dream. Baseball was the backup. And the University of Kansas was the holy grail. His grandparents on both sides, parents, and three sisters all Rock Chalked in Lawrence.
“I wasn’t that good at basketball, but every kid in my area grew up wanting to play for KU,” Gyllenborg said. “It was my life dream. But I didn’t have the vision.”
His self-proclaimed “delusional” mindset, or what others might just call drive and discipline, culminated in a late start and a new dream that would eventually lead him to Laramie.
Going into his senior year, Gyllenborg’s high school hired a new football coach who knew him as a multi-sport athlete. The coach coaxed him into trying football “just for fun.” His friends had begged him for years. This time, he gave in.
“I tried it, and I was really bad at first,” Gyllenborg admitted. “I just didn’t know what I was doing. But they made it easy on me, they said, ‘just run a hitch, a go route, jet sweeps, we’ll make this easy. Let your athleticism do everything else.’”
In just three games before an LCL injury sidelined him, his athleticism and versatility spoke volumes.
At one point, his family, who had low expectations before his first game, watched in awe as Gyllenborg executed a series where he caught his first-ever touchdown pass, kicked the extra point, and then took care of the ensuing kickoff.
In the 3.5-ish games he played, he was responsible for 25 points, punted a long of 54 yards, and caught 10 passes for 212 yards.
That was enough for Wyoming to take a chance.
No real visits. No other offers. COVID had shut everything down. But Craig Bohl and his staff believed.
“The mentality was, you are going to come here and learn how to play ball,” Gyllenborg recalled. “We are going to develop you. There’s not a better school outside the Power Five that you could come to and develop.”
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That’s how a kid who had never been in a three-point stance before Wyoming ended up on multiple meaningful watch lists ahead of this season.
A long way from the young man who threw his first block in freshman fall camp.
“That first week of fall camp my freshman year was the hardest week of my life,” Gyllenborg said. “Just the physicality and not knowing what I was doing, it was overwhelming — going up against guys that had been dreaming about DI football their whole life.”
He spent two years on the scout team, learning from older players like Treyton Welch and grinding through practices where he often felt left behind. But those years built him.
“I tell the young tight ends all the time not to be discouraged about being on scout team,” Gyllenborg said. “You’re going against the 1’s defense every day, so you have the opportunity to get better. Iron sharpens iron.”
Wyoming Head Coach Jay Sawvel has witnessed the evolution firsthand.
“When he got there, he was kind of just a tall, skinny guy that ran well,” Sawvel said. “Now, the gap between how good he can be and where he sees himself has closed. I think he’s starting to realize, ‘yeah, I can be pretty special.’”
Gyllenborg’s National Attention and NFL Draft Ascension
The nation first started putting respect on Gyllenborg’s name in 2023, when he caught the game-tying touchdown in double overtime against Texas Tech in the Cowboys’ first game of the season. He finished that year with 23 catches for 360 yards and three touchdowns.
“The big breakthrough for him was when he caught that tying touchdown against Texas Tech,” Sawvel said. “There’s an astronomical amount of growth he will still do going forward, but he’s a really talented guy.”
Since then, Gyllenborg has become one of Wyoming’s most reliable offensive weapons. By 2024, he had earned All-Mountain West recognition. He established himself as one of the league’s premier tight ends, catching passes in traffic, blocking with an edge, and providing steady leadership.
His NFL stock started to flicker on the radar.
“It wasn’t really until this last season that I realized that an NFL dream could be in reach,” Gyllenborg shared. “Last year, all the recognition, it was exciting. But this year, it was still about my growth and how I could help the team. My position coach, Shannon Moore, has played a huge role in helping me do that.”
Focus on the team. It’s a theme Sawvel returns to often when talking about his tight end.
“In 2025, this is a guy that could have left Wyoming and gone anywhere he wanted to and got paid a lot more than we can pay him,” Sawvel quipped. “But he said to me one time, ‘coach, seriously if you need to take what you are giving me and give it to somebody else to keep them here or to get someone, then do it.’ How many people are doing that?”
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Not many. In an era of transfer portal mercenaries and NIL bidding wars, Gyllenborg is a throwback.
“There’s not a box that he doesn’t check,” Sawvel added. “Great person, great student, great athlete. Just a really good player. He’s ready to be a pro.”
The 2025 season didn’t go the way Gyllenborg and Wyoming had hoped. A hamstring injury plagued the speedy tight end, who only appeared in five games, never catching more than six passes.
He recovered his health towards the end of the season, earning a Senior Bowl invite thanks to 80 career receptions for 1,023 yards and 7 touchdowns. Gyllenborg logged 17 career games with at least three receptions and capped his final outing with a career-best six catches against Hawai‘i.
Fun fact: the last Wyoming player to participate in the Senior Bowl was linebacker Chad Muma in 2022.
NFL scouts already see what Wyoming fans know: Gyllenborg is an untapped resource.
“Gyllenborg has the physical gifts to earn the allure of NFL teams,” PFSN’s Ian Cummings explains.
“Gyllenborg is tall and lean, with elite explosive athleticism,” Cummings continues. “He can get upfield in a blink as a seam threat or working off motions, and he has the long speed to stretch creases and get behind the second level. Additionally, with his tall frame, he’s shown he can properly box out defenders, play positioning, and secure tough catches.”
With his late start, his ceiling is still rising. He’s a field-stretching threat with explosive top speed, making him a nightmare for linebackers and size and physicality that pose problems for safeties. He is a creator of mismatches, a big play threat.
“He’ll be off the charts at the combine,” Sawvel predicted.
But Gyllenborg isn’t rushing it.
“All the press and attention doesn’t mean anything until I actually make it to the NFL,” he said. “This year, I was just focused on the team.”
And maybe that’s the most NFL-ready trait of all.
