DaVon Hamilton started quietly but finished strong in his career as an Ohio State defensive tackle, eventually becoming a third-team All-Big Ten selection and a third-round NFL draft pick after a breakout final season as a Buckeye in which he recorded 28 total tackles with 10.5 tackles for loss and six sacks.
Going into his fourth season as a Buckeye, Ty Hamilton is looking to have the same kind of late-career breakout that his older brother did.
Like his older brother, Ty arrived at Ohio State as an unheralded three-star recruit. DaVon Hamilton was ranked as the No. 993 overall prospect in the 2015 recruiting class, while Ty Hamilton was ranked as the No. 762 overall prospect in the 2020 recruiting class.
Unlike DaVon, Ty wasn’t initially recruited to play defensive tackle. Weighing only 260 pounds coming out of high school, the younger Hamilton thought he would play defensive end at Ohio State. But Larry Johnson ended up making him a defensive tackle, and Hamilton – who is now 6-foot-3 and 295 pounds – believes he ended up in the right spot.
“I thought I was coming in to go play defensive end. But I think it's definitely a blessing to be where I’m at now, because Coach J saw a vision of me and now I'm here,” Hamilton said earlier this month. “So I just can't be nothing but grateful.
“Just going off what my brother did, he saw a vision and he saw something in me that I could do to play the same type of role, and I appreciate Coach J for that.”
Like DaVon, Ty has already shown to be more valuable to the Buckeyes than his recruiting ranking suggested. The Pickerington Central graduate has been a regular in the defensive tackle rotation for the past two years, emerging as Ohio State’s starting nose tackle for the final five games of last season. In a recruiting class that included three hybrid defensive linemen who could have played either defensive tackle or defensive end for the Buckeyes – Jacolbe Cowan, Darrion Henry-Young and Hamilton – Ty is the only one who became a contributor at Ohio State, as Cowan and Henry-Young both transferred after two years at OSU, even though both of them were ranked at least 599 spots higher in 247Sports’ composite rankings.
Johnson says the younger Hamilton arrived at Ohio State with a similar work ethic as his brother and has in turn developed into a substantially better player than he was when he arrived at OSU.
“Just the growth, going from 260 walking into high school to 290. Much stronger, understanding the defensive scheme. Really great leadership skills. Outstanding student in the classroom. So all those things tie into being a really great leader. And he's very vocal, and guys listen to him,” Johnson said when asked what Hamilton has done to become a staple of the defensive tackle rotation.
While Mike Hall is the most prominent star of Ohio State’s defensive tackle unit and Tyleik Williams and Tywone Malone are also expected to see significant playing time in the rotation, Hamilton is expected to remain a starter this season and lead the Buckeyes’ run-stopping efforts up front.
Statistically, Ty Hamilton hasn’t made a big dent for the Buckeyes, as he’s recorded just 27 total tackles with 2.5 sacks over the past two years after redshirting as a true freshman. But the same was true for DaVon Hamilton entering the 2019 season, as the elder Hamilton recorded only 38 total tackles with eight tackles for loss and one sack in his first three playing seasons as a Buckeye.
DaVon’s breakout year didn’t come until his fifth year as a Buckeye, so Ty still has time to become a bigger impact player. As a fourth-year Buckeye and redshirt junior, Hamilton still has three more years of collegiate eligibility thanks to the extra year of eligibility all players received in 2020.
Given that Ty is in line to be a starter this season, though, Ohio State will be looking for his breakout year to come now. And Hamilton is confident he’s ready to make that happen.
“Just coming off of last year, like coming off the back half of the season, playing pretty good, I think it’s just like having that confidence, I can go out and dominate when I need to dominate,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton isn’t worried about what the final stat line looks like, though, as he just wants to do everything he can to help the Buckeyes win.
“One thing we say, we want rings over stats,” Hamilton said. “So just putting the selfishness aside and just moving as a team. Because if one person makes a play, we all make a play.”
Johnson, who has coached both Hamilton brothers for the entirety of their Ohio State careers, said Ty is a different player than DaVon but that they share the common traits of both being “very strong” and “great, hard-working guys.” Ty sees himself as a different player than his brother, too, but says he is using his brother’s improvement over the course of his Ohio State career as inspiration for his own trajectory.
“Of course I look at it as a blueprint,” Hamilton said. “I'm my own person, but I definitely want to use that blueprint and amplify it. I want to be able to do better than him the way he did, and just use his teachings and take it and use it to my advantage.”
Ty says having an older brother who now plays in the NFL – DaVon is entering his fourth season with the Jacksonville Jaguars after signing a three-year, $34.5 million contract extension with the team this offseason – has helped him refine his own game and become a more well-rounded player.
“He's been in the game for a while now, so just learning the little things,” Ty said when asked what his older brother has taught him. “The little inches that you can see on the field that you really didn't see if you were coming in as a freshman. Being able to use that to your advantage, like the little 1% things.”
