The Baltimore Ravens Have Become Kyle Hamilton’s Team, Not Lamar Jackson’s

It’s impossible to glean much of anything football related in early April.

The Ravens were merely hours into their first team workouts under rookie coach Jesse Minter. It was a chilly spring day, and most Baltimore sports fans with time on their hands midday, in the middle of the week, were probably watching the Orioles in another slopfest with the White Sox. In Owings Mills, they’re still weeks from conducting anything approximating a football practice involving a football, let alone donning pads or helmets. It’s as quiet as it gets on the NFL calendar.

But there was something about Kyle Hamilton’s presence in an informal scrum with the local media after a session in the weight room that resonated as deeply as any football chatter can this time of year. Weird as it may seem, it was further confirmation of his standing in this organization and the weight he now carries. And as I watched 13 words come across his lips with just the right tone – not cavalier or flippant, but transparent and succinct – it all sort of crystalized, again.

“The standard has not been met and upheld,” Hamilton stated directly and forthrightly. “We need to fix that.”

This is Kyle Hamilton’s football team. He IS the voice of the Ravens. He is their front-facing, outward leader. Above and beyond anyone else.

By the middle of last season it was pretty apparent to me that Hamilton had in essence become the spokesman for this locker room.

And his remarks and tone and demeanor and candor on this lazy Wednesday afternoon just further confirmed it. Part of it is born of his natural development in stature: by how he plays and how he conducts himself and how seriously he seemingly takes these opportunities to reach the fans through the media. Part of it just seems to be in him.

Perspective Beyond His Years

The way he spoke emotionally about John Harbaugh’s sudden departure and Minter’s hire made you a little more excited for the season to start. And the 25-year-old’s sense of perspective quicky shined through.

After the shock of Harbaugh’s firing all wore off, Hamilton said: “I’m excited for him, and I’m excited for us. I think he’s got a great opportunity up there in New York. He stole a lot of our players, and those guys will do great up there as well. But everything has an expiration date, and he did great stuff while he was here.”

It’s hard for Hamilton to BS, which is endearing. He didn’t want to short-shift the Ravens elaborate process of finding a new coach but acknowledged the overriding reality: “When the stars aligned it kind of seemed like a shoo-in,” Hamilton opined, adroitly, of Minter’s hire.

“It’s new, but it’s not,” Hamilton said of the transition. “And I think it’s good that it’s new, and it’s good that it’s not at the same time.”

Hamilton has embraced these opportunities to address macro issues with this franchise in a way no one else on this team really has or possibly can. It certainly appears to come naturally to him, and he’s been in the league long enough to assume such a mantle. When he speaks about Minter’s process and initial interactions with the players, it matters. Even the way he apologized for remarks about the fans last season stuck the perfect chord.

Hamilton hasn’t skirted responsibility and he has prided himself on availability, even when things get tough. While Roquan Smith has come up small both on the field and in the accountability department the past two years, and as Marlon Humphrey has drawn raised eyebrows both for his decline in productivity and some of the unusual things he says (and posts on social media), Hamilton’s role as a conduit for the players has become abundantly clear.

What About Lamar?

And while Lamar Jackson casts a unique shadow over everything in this franchise, as he should, anyone who pays attention to this team even a little but knows that the quarterback’s style is quirky. His very attendance for the start of an offseason lifting program was far from certain (and was a national story), he is engulfed in another unusual contractual dance with the front office and he isn’t one prone to speak in the kind of terms that Hamilton does when it comes to the team on the whole or even one’s side of the ball.

Everything is a little different with Lamar, which is part of what makes him such a unicorn and ubiquitous presence. But he doesn’t strike me as the most prominent voice in this locker room.

Hamilton does. And that’s a very good thing for this franchise.

The young veteran gets it. He’s thoughtful and thorough. He’s filling what was becoming an awkward void. And I am sure his teammates are thankful for it.