Safety Kyle Hamilton Revealed The Biggest Change Coming For QB Lamar Jackson And The Ravens Offense

The question could not have been anu more generic. The prompt to Kyle Hamilton could not have been any more open-ended and mundane.

With Ravens training camp just underway, the Ravens dynamic safety was asked about what he sees different from quarterback Lamar Jackson in practice this season versus all the others, in summers and falls and winters past. The response was immediate and where Hamilton, incredibly cerebral and a clear student of the game, went was telling and it mimics what we’re heard from Rams head coach Sean McVay and Broncos head coach Sean Payton and longtime general manager Marty Hurney and NFL analyst Brian Baldinger and pretty much everyone we’ve probed about the most significant change coming to the Ravens offense in 2026 on "The Daily Flock Show."

"One, just technically, schematically, the under center, it feels very natural from my perspective for him,” Hamilton said, picking up a motif that is going to take Jackson out of the shotgun and pistol to a degree we’ve never seen before. “Just play fakes, running out of every handoff like he has the ball. It’s just little stuff like that that he has been very intentional about.”

Hamilton went on to note how Jackson seems even faster to him now at age 29, and we’ve had discourse and debate for years about whether Jackson is more built for speed or contact. Eh, whatever. He’s not going to run as much as before and they are shedding pretty much all of the old stuff (and especially a lot of the Greg Roman stuff that propelled Jackson to his first MVP).

“I do not think we carried over anything,” Jackson noted of the total and complete offensive reboot after practice Wednesday.

A Product Of His Environment

Rookie offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, who just turned 30, is all about being under center because it’s a core belief for Payton. And he’s well aware that McVay, considered the best at the play calling and scheme craft on offense, is equally in love with it. And last year Doyle was on a Bears staff under wunderkind Ben Johnson that made Job One getting second-year QB Celeb Williams under center after being gun exclusive for the most part to that point.

For Hamilton’s mind to immediately go there is more than some afterthought.

He knows how much more difficult it is to defend play action under center and how challenging running vertical routes on early downs with heavy personnel on the field can be. He was a part of a Ravens defense in 2023 that became the first in NFL history to lead the NFL in sacks, takeaways and points allowed, and McVay’s Rams came in here for what was a 10 am start for them in the rain and cold and they carved Baltimore up for four quarters.

And rookie head coach Jesse Minter, a defensive mastermind, knows that smart teams are going to be following in Payton and McVay’s path this season. Jackson’s athletic ability make him even more of a weapon if he doesn’t have to take his eyes off a defense and there is a wide smorgasbord of run plays available to this entire offense by going under center.

”You could have some holes in a scheme, and if you have Lamar Jackson, you might win an MVP, go really far,” Hamilton noted. “So, I mean scheme is scheme, but Lamar is Lamar at the end of the day. He is a very gifted, talented human as well as athlete. You throw him the kitchen sink, and he'll make a good meal out of it."

The marriage of scheme and quarterback has the potential to coalesce beyond what we saw in 2025, though questions persist about the depth of proven NFL playmakers in the passing game for him.

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