The NFL Combine is done. All of the college All-Star games have been played. The tape is loaded in, and the numbers have been crunched. By all accounts, we have everything we need to be ready for the draft. We now have weeks to overthink it. This has been happening for years. For example, in 2017, experts stopped mocking Joey Bosa in the first round entirely. It happens, as we have way too much time to overanalyze.
The latest victim of this overanalysis is Kyle Hamilton, whose top-five draft stock is plummeting. We’ve watched Hamilton dominate for more than a year, and thus, his stock has steadily solidified in the top 10. Hamilton is the unanimous best safety in the draft, described as a “future Pro Bowler” by Lance Zierlein and a “matchup weapon” by Dane Brugler. Both project him comfortably to the top 10.
Around March, Hamilton’s draft stock took a nosedive.
Hamilton still averages above a top-10 selection, but mocking him outside of that range is more popular than ever. Fans are beginning to question if he truly belongs that high in the draft. Hamilton falling to the Houston Texans at No. 13 or Philadelphia Eagles at No. 15 is not the outlandish idea it may have been during the Notre Dame season, while we watched him dominate every Saturday. What happened?
Kyle Hamilton ran the 40-yard dash.
The NFL Combine is a useful tool. It lets us put dynamically different players into conformed settings and compare them while controlling for all other scenarios. That’s useful data, but as Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has pointed out, it’s just one data point. It is meant to be a piece of the puzzle, not an indicator on its own. A huge knock on Hamilton is his 4.59 40-yard dash, just barely above average across the whole NFL. That’s not a dealbreaker, but it is certainly not becoming of a possible top-five-overall pick.
We have to lay out our premises to find the problem here. As it goes:
- Kyle Hamilton needs to be able to chase down plays far away from him to justify top-10 status.
- That requires elite speed.
- His 40 time does not imply elite speed.
- Therefore, he can’t chase down those plays.
- Therefore, he should not be a top-10 pick.
Do you see where we made a mistake? We are relying on that 40 time as an implication. That is not a categorical statement. Hamilton either can or can’t chase down those plays. We can either check his 40 time on tape or take the 40 time on faith. Chasing down range-based plays is one of Hamilton’s greatest strengths.
So, what gives? How come Hamilton looks so much faster than he tested? Think a little geometrically. A 40-yard dash is 40 yards in a straight line. When does a safety actually do that? He starts 15 yards off the ball, so firing into the box on a run play won’t cover that much distance. If it’s a deep route, he’ll have a 15-yard head start. Compare to a cornerback or wide receiver, who might find that top speed on a longer route or breakaway play, and you’ll see that the job of safety is a little different.
Consider a play that starts from the 50 yard line. Say Hamilton lines up 15 yards off the ball, on the opposite hash from the ball. Let’s say it’s an outside run to the boundary side, meaning it’s as far away from Hamilton as possible. Even in that scenario, Hamilton won’t need to run a 40-yard dash. Realistically, only the first 20 yards are a straight sprint, after which it’s about gap spacing, angles, and technique.
Move that line around wherever you want. If he needs to cover deep to the opposite hash, it’s only a 40-yard dash if it’s a shot play all the way to the goal line. The ball would have to be thrown well before Hamilton finishes running that 40, at which point it’s more about anticipation and ball skills (which he has in spades). There is no realistic scenario where Hamilton needs to get to top speed and stay there. Not at safety.
There are times where his speed comes into play, like this play here, but Hamilton has made a living overcoming his speed deficit. He’s famous for his recognition ability and football IQ. To use a coaching cliché, the best way to get there two steps earlier is to leave two steps sooner. We’ve seen plenty of freakishly athletic safeties end up late to a lot of plays. It doesn’t matter how you get there, only that you get there.
Instead, the shorter splits of the 40-yard dash are more useful. In particular, the 10-yard split does a much better job of simulating the job a safety actually does. Consider this play, also linked above. Hamilton has to clear 10 or 15 yards of space before breaking down to make the play. His 10-yard split is around the 77th percentile, which is plenty good.
The same principle applies with Hamilton’s agility drills. He has held up in man coverage against slot corners as much as a safety can be expected to, even though his short shuttle fell below NFL average. A 6.9 second three-cone is nothing to be ashamed of, anyway.
The other factor driving Hamilton’s fall is positional confusion. This is something of a litmus test of the creativity of the person evaluating him. Hamilton’s role at Notre Dame has confused a few analysts. Per PFF’s charting, Hamilton spent less than 20% of his snaps in the box and spent most of his time as a deep safety or slot defender. That might fool you into thinking he isn’t capable of fitting the run, but really, it tells you about Notre Dame’s strategy.
Hamilton performed several different duties from a two-high alignment. He’d play deep safety, play a robber zone, or fit the run, all from that hash. That helped to disguise Notre Dame’s coverages by making each one look the same pre-snap. Does that sound familiar? It should if you’ve read my breakdown of Ed Donatell’s defense. The Minnesota Vikings will likely apply a similar strategy.
In fact, versatility is Hamilton’s main draw. As Alex Rollins explains well, he is a jack of all trades and master of none. Think of the elite safeties in today’s NFL. Tyrann Mathieu, Budda Baker, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and more all embody that versatility. Not to mention Harrison Smith, an all-too-easy comparison for Hamilton given their gold-domed origins. Conversely, how many Earl Thomas types dominate the league like Thomas used to?
The era of specialization in the NFL is dying. Long live the era of every player being as capable of as many roles as possible, confusing quarterbacks with each layer of complexity. Simply reading Hamilton’s alignment doesn’t tell you what his role is. If you want to check for a robber zone, you’ll have to read Hamilton and four other defenders to do it. That homogenous alignment data isn’t an effort to hide Hamilton. It’s an effort to maximize him.
If you want some real detractions of Hamilton to play with, he tends to take poor run angles, which leads to a tackling issue. You could cherry-pick enough lowlights to talk yourself into passing on him, were he to fall to the Vikings at pick No. 12. He is by no means the perfect player, but those are considerably watered-down weaknesses. An elite player with a minor run-defense issue is a much easier sell than one who is secretly slow, or impossible to use in the NFL.
Hamilton shouldn’t fall anywhere near pick 12. In a just world, the Vikings would have to trade up to have a prayer at landing the do-it-all safety. But we might not live in a just world. We might live in a world where we have a month after the combine, and we can use that month to talk ourselves into something we saw proven false time and time again every Saturday.
