There was homework and then there was the work Tyler and Kyle Hamilton were assigned at home. That applied to the summers, too. Even though school was out, Jackie Hamilton’s class was always in session for her two sons.
Her daily assignment was simple: open the dictionary and find a new word. Then, share what you’ve learned by pronouncing and spelling the word and using it in a sentence.
“It felt like I was at a damn spelling bee, but over time, we learned to embrace it,” said Tyler, 28, four years older than Kyle, an All-Pro safety for the Baltimore Ravens. “It sort of became second nature for us to go out of our way to do that little bit to get better.”
There was a saying in the Hamilton household that initially felt harsh to two kids already excelling in school and sports: Good wasn’t good enough.
Ultimately, it became a way of life.
“It’s always been like that,” Kyle Hamilton said. “Whether it’s football, basketball, academics, whatever we’re doing, it’s like, ‘All right, do it again and do it better.’”
Hebrews 12:1❤️ pic.twitter.com/a5ZjbMUe0m
— Kyle Hamilton (@kyledhamilton_) January 29, 2024
If you ask Hamilton about gaining entry into a prestigious “brain camp” by scoring highly on his ACTs as a 12-year-old or about being a member of Mensa International, an organization for people with high IQs, he’s liable to make a self-deprecating joke about how he still hasn’t graduated from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
If you bring up his other talents, like how he occupied the second chair in the high school band as a trombone player or how he’s a 6-handicap in golf and once shot even par, he may tell you how he was cut from his ninth grade baseball team. As he recounts the story through gritted teeth, it’s clear it still bothers him.
And if you want to talk to him about his standout 2023 season, when he achieved All-Pro status and convinced many he was one of the best defensive players in football, the do-it-all safety will shrug. He’ll then rattle off all the areas of his game that need to get better.
Just how good does Hamilton think he can be? He ponders the question and then channels an award-winning actor.
“I feel like I’m never going to get to that point,” Hamilton said. “Matthew McConaughey had a quote when he won an Oscar. He said, ‘My idol is myself in five years,’ or something like that. I’ll never be that person, but I’m always chasing it, and when I get there, I’m chasing myself in five years. I feel like I’ll always be chasing perfection, because I know what I can be.”
In just his third NFL season, Hamilton is already considered one of the league’s best safeties. He hasn’t consistently made the “splash plays” that he produced last year, but he’s second on the team in tackles and makes a thunderous hit just about every week. His status as a locker room leader for an organization with a rich defensive history is growing. Smart, well-spoken, charismatic, self-deprecating and blessed with movie star looks, Hamilton has all the makings of the face of an NFL franchise.
Yet, football has never “defined” him. That’s partly because there are so many other things he’s good at or interested in.
“Everything looks like it comes easy for him,” said Tyler. “But he doesn’t get jaded with it.”
Unicorn: something unusual, rare or unique.
The Ravens are constantly chasing a positionless defense, putting as many versatile players on the field to better match up with offenses. In Hamilton, they have the ultimate chess piece.
“Kyle could play every position on the defense, except nose guard, because he can’t put on as much weight as Michael Pierce,” Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey said.
Hamilton, who is 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, can play the deep part of the field or move closer to the line of scrimmage. He can play nickel cornerback or dime linebacker. He can match up with tight ends or slot receivers. He blitzes and terrorizes screen passes.
“One of the top players in the league,” defensive coordinator Zach Orr said.
Versatility has been more of a command for Hamilton than a choice. He fostered NFL dreams when he was a young boy, only to be told he was too young to play organized football. When he hit the required age to play a few years later, he alerted his mother. She had no idea he was counting down the days the whole time.
If the NFL didn’t work out, Hamilton believed the NBA would. His father, Derrek, was drafted by the then-New Jersey Nets in the third round in 1988. He played overseas for well over a decade (Kyle was born in Greece). Kyle’s brother, Tyler, played college basketball at the University of Pennsylvania and William & Mary. Kyle and Tyler were in the gym most days by 6 a.m. getting up shots before school. Kyle competed against future NBA stars Anthony Edwards and Evan Mobley when he was younger, and he still believes he could have made the NBA if he committed to it at an earlier age.
Jackie, however, warned Kyle to have a Plan B, C and D. She reminded him of the long odds of becoming a professional athlete. Any chance she got, she exposed him to other things. She took her boys to museums and art exhibits. She emphasized education, creating her own workbooks that her boys needed to complete at home, and encouraged them to embrace music and the arts.
Hamilton learned quickly that it wasn’t necessarily about being the best student or best athlete. It was about being the most balanced and diverse, and exploring every opportunity and resource available.
“I was definitely fighting it a little bit at first, but Mom was always saying, ‘It’s not your decision,’” Hamilton said. “All of that stuff just made sports more enjoyable for me, because it wasn’t the only thing that I did. It made me more well-rounded as a person.”
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.
Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox.
Sign Up
As his friends were hanging out by the pool and getting ready for their freshman year of high school, Hamilton was at a three-week brain camp as part of Duke University’s Talent Identification Program. He spent part of his summer dissecting frogs, performing thinking exercises and learning how the brain works.
The most eye-opening part of the experience, though, may have been taking the required ACTs for admission. Barely a middle schooler, he found himself in a classroom surrounded by high school seniors. It wouldn’t be the last time Hamilton would encounter an overwhelming situation and need to persevere and adapt.
“We start in the seventh grade at Marist, and it was early fall and my assistant football coach, Dan Perez, had a PE class. After the class was over, he came to me and said, ‘I just witnessed the best athlete that’s ever been at Marist,’” recalled longtime Marist High (Ga.) football coach Alan Chadwick. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I blew it off. Sure enough, as it transpired through the next three, four, five years, Kyle was the best we had in a lot of aspects.”
Physicality: involvement of a lot of bodily contact or activity.
Proof comes in the form of a picture that still circulates within the Hamilton family. It features a young football player careening toward an adjacent fence, courtesy of a punishing hit by Kyle near the sideline. The impact of the collision caused the boy to roll out of bounds and settle under a fence surrounding the field.
“One day, driving to a game, he told our mom that he was going to make a kid quit football,” Tyler said. “He made three kids quit that year.”
There was a striped carpet at the Hamilton household that provided a battleground for the brothers. The stripes were a perfect replication of yard markers. Tyler and Kyle played one-on-one football games on that carpet and occasionally invited friends over to take part.
“We knocked each other into walls,” Tyler said.
Derrek always told Chadwick that his son’s future was in football, but Chadwick was skeptical. He knew of Derrek’s professional basketball background. He also saw Kyle’s long and lean physique and figured basketball was what Kyle would ultimately focus on.
“Every year, I worried about that phone call or that knock on the door and him saying, ‘Coach, I’m sticking to basketball,’” Chadwick said. “I didn’t even want to bring it up with him because I was afraid of his answer.”
View this post on Instagram
Baseball may have been Hamilton’s best sport when he was younger. He turned a triple play as a 6-year-old. However, he got bored with baseball and gave it up when he was about 10. He hadn’t played in a few years when he decided to try out for the ninth grade baseball team at Marist, simply because his best friends played.
“Only time I’ve ever been cut,” he said. “Humbling experience, for sure.”
He didn’t stay down for long. He joined the lacrosse team despite never playing before until that season. But his sports hierarchy was clear: football, basketball and then everything else.
“He could shoot from 30 feet away when he was like 7,” Tyler said. “His basketball coach would be like, ‘Look where you are shooting from.’ And he’d turn around and say, ‘Well, I made it.’”
The physicality of football, though, gripped him. He loved the competitive aspect of it, how the result of a team sport was decided by so many individual matchups. He prided himself on winning those matchups by using his mind, talent and athleticism. A little brute force never hurt, either.
“We used to go to Riverside Military Academy for our two-week fall camp,” said Green Bay Packers tight end John FitzPatrick, a former high school basketball and football teammate. “I was on offense and he was on defense and I ran some sort of go or over route. He came out of nowhere and just smacked me.
“Kyle is special. You saw that early on.”
Butterfly effect: when an action or change that does not seem important has a very large effect, especially in other places.
Ravens coach John Harbaugh had a simple question for Hamilton when he arrived at the team facility a few days before the 2022 NFL Draft.
“What are you doing here?” Harbaugh asked.
The Ravens had the No. 14 pick and Hamilton, considered one of the most talented players in the draft after a standout three seasons at Notre Dame, was expected to go before they were on the clock. The Ravens did their due diligence anyway.
A few of the teams drafting in the top 10 were against taking a safety — even one as versatile as Hamilton — when they had other “premium” position needs. There were also concerns about his 4.59 40 time at the NFL Scouting Combine. Hamilton’s pro day performance didn’t ease the angst.
“I was always like, ‘If you want to draft me off the combine, go ahead,’” Hamilton said. “‘If you want to draft me off tape, then go ahead.’ I think it all worked out.”
View this post on Instagr
His demeanor didn’t surprise those who know him best and don’t remember him ever getting worked up about anything, except the time the 13-year-old was in the same elevator as his idol, LeBron James, at an AAU tournament in Las Vegas. Hamilton, who said the last time he cried was when James’ Miami Heat were beaten by the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals, clammed up and didn’t say anything to James.
“He was by himself and he stood in the corner and freaked out,” Tyler said. “You would have thought he saw the second coming of Jesus. He texted us and it was like, ‘GUYS, GUYS, GUYS, I JUST SAW LEBRON.’”
Years later, Hamilton was so calm during the first round of the 2022 draft that he sauntered to the bathroom just as the Ravens were on the clock. About 10 seconds after he sat back down, Baltimore general manager Eric DeCosta called to tell Hamilton that he’d be a Raven. A slow 40 time led to Terrell Suggs falling to the Ravens in 2003. Nineteen years later, it contributed to Hamilton doing the same.
“Shoutout to him for running the 40 in zig-zags,” Tyler joked.
The Ravens were confident in how Hamilton’s skill set would translate to the NFL, but they’ll concede that they weren’t anticipating how relentless and physical Hamilton is. Those are areas Hamilton takes pride in, which is why one of the highlights from his 2023 season was standout defensive backs Denzel Ward, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Pat Surtain II telling him at the Pro Bowl that they respected his style of play.
If you ask him his favorite play from last year, he doesn’t bring up his three sacks against the Indianapolis Colts, his interception return score against the Cleveland Browns or either of his two interceptions on Christmas night against the 49ers. He brings up a play that preceded his second interception against San Francisco.
“I missed a tackle in the flat on Deebo (Samuel) and got back up, tackled him and tried to get the ball out. It was a 3-yard gain. On the next play, I got that pick,” Hamilton said. “It was like the football gods were rewarding me for running to the football.”
Hamilton is eyeing more rewards in the future. This will be the first offseason where he’s eligible to sign a contract extension, and given the Ravens’ history of keeping their core homegrown players, it seems more a matter of when than if a deal gets done.
There’s that elusive under-par round of golf, which has become one of his biggest passions. He’s nine credits short of getting his degree at Notre Dame, and he’ll finish them after the season. Then, there’s a whole life to look forward to, on and off the field.
“I feel like I’ve always had a bigger purpose,” Hamilton said. “I love football and it’s the biggest thing in my life besides family, faith and everything like that. I’ll be devastated and sad when it comes to an end, but at the same time, people always joke that when I’m done playing, I’m going to be crushing Excel sheets or something. I do want to see the business side of life, to be able to assimilate to society.”
Jackie Hamilton has long told her son that he’s going to be the next Michael Strahan and host “Good Morning America.” Tyler could see his brother coaching. Kyle has thought plenty about eventually owning his own company and being a chief marketing officer.
As always with Kyle Hamilton, the possibilities seem endless. Why define oneself when there’s still so much to see and do?
(Top photo: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
