Baltimore Ravens Safety Kyle Hamilton ‘Gets Better Every Game’
The Baltimore Ravens came away with a Thursday Night Football win over the Cincinnati Bengals and while tight end Mark Andrews was lost for the season in that game, there’s still reason to be confident moving forward.
While it’s going to take every Ravens player on the offense to help replace Andrews, the defense is hoping to get healthy themselves and rely on young guys like safety Kyle Hamilton who coach John Harbaugh praised following the Week 11 victory.
“He gets better every game,” Harbaugh said of his second-year safety. “We put more on his plate every single game and a lot of the time is what we were doing is we were showing some zero pressure and some different type of loaded zero pressures, and we brought a couple of them. Then we ran out of them a few times, and I thought he was the main guy in terms of selling the disguise, he did a great job with it.”
Baltimore Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton (14) is growing into a major piece of the defense in his second NFL season.
David Richard-USA TODAY Sports
Hamilton finished with a 77.2 grade from Pro Football Focus, his sixth game this year with a grade over 70 from the popular evaluation site.
His stat line from Week 11 shows three tackles and two passes defended, but his 100 percent snap share on Thursday is arguably the more important piece of data to show how impactful Hamilton has come to be.
The second-year safety from Notre Dame has already nearly tripled the amount of games he started as a rookie and he’s appeared on 96 percent of the defensive snaps this season compared to 53 percent last year.
Because of that and his improved play Hamilton has set, or is on pace to set, career highs in every defensive category including sacks, interceptions, tackles, tackles for loss, and quarterback hits.
“I feel like I’m trying to help the defense as much as I can, wherever they put me,” Hamilton said following the win. “If that’s at safety, so be it. If that’s at nickel, so be it…Moving me around gives us variety and complexity to the defense and lets us do a whole bunch of things we like to do.”
What all Ravens like to do is win, and getting one on a short week following a disappointing loss the game prior is a good way to get back to doing what they want.
The loss of Andrews is going to hurt, no doubt. But with the remaining pieces - including Hamilton - still playing in Baltimore, there is no shortage of confidence moving into the final stretch of the season.
