Ravens star Kyle Hamilton gets signature play in homecoming win vs. Falcons

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ATLANTA — Kyle Hamilton did the unthinkable late Sunday night: He led the Ravens astray.

A dramatic 30-23 win over the Atlanta Falcons was in hand, and so was the ball he’d intercepted to end the game in overtime. Every impulse in the all-everything safety’s brain was telling him to run. So Hamilton ran. He ran off the field, a line of Ravens trailing in his wake. He ran through the end zone, flashing the “A-Town down” gesture beloved here in his hometown. He ran into the first tunnel he saw inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

On Wednesday, Hamilton had lamented that he’d never gotten the chance to play in the Falcons’ home stadium; a high school state championship in his junior year had been moved elsewhere because of inclement weather. Maybe if he had played in that game, Hamilton would’ve known that this tunnel led to nowhere particularly special. So Hamilton did a U-turn, along with the dozens of teammates who’d giddily followed him, returning to the scene of perhaps the most iconic play in his distinguished career. Thousands of Ravens fans stood to applaud him, exhausted but ecstatic.

“Kyle said after the game that we’ll remember this moment forever,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. “And, shoot, I will, too, honestly.”

Hamilton had made the game’s decisive play look easy. The Ravens were ahead for the first time since the first quarter when their defense took the field with just under three minutes remaining in overtime. Quarterback Tyler Huntley’s late-game heroics had given them a lifeline.

Atlanta’s pulse, meanwhile, was faint. Ravens outside linebacker Tavius Robinson had knocked starting quarterback Michael Penix Jr. out of the game on the Falcons’ final drive of regulation. Backup Tua Tagovailoa was in. His first pass, to wide receiver Drake London, went for 20 yards. His next pass went right to Hamilton, who’d dropped into a shallow zone on a “Cover 2” call — two deep safeties, five underneath defenders — and stepped in front of a second straight pass to London, the Falcons’ top target.

“Tua tried to look me off, but I was just looking off the quarterback’s eyes,” Hamilton said of his first interception since 2024. “Just caught the ball.”

Hamilton, who starred at the nearby Marist School, estimated that he knew over 500 people at the game. “Pretty sweet moment to end it like that,” he said.

The Ravens had more than just a Hamilton cheering section in Atlanta. Fans boomed the “Oh!” during the pregame rendition of the national anthem. Chants of “De-fense!” cascaded down from the upper seating bowl throughout the game while the Falcons offense was on the field.

Supporters came from far and wide — and from just down the road. Inside linebacker Roquan Smith, a Georgia native and former Bulldogs star, estimated last week that he’d have well over 100 backers in the stands. Safety Malaki Starks is another born-and-raised Georgian. Outside linebacker Zion Young and cornerback Nate Wiggins grew up playing together in Atlanta.

And that was just the defense.

“We’ve got a lot of Georgia guys on the team, so I know it felt good for everybody to get the win today,” said wide receiver Rashod Bateman, a native of Tifton, Georgia. “We knew we couldn’t leave here without a win. We wouldn’t hear it from our families, so we had to leave with a win.”

It was not easy. The Ravens, playing without star quarterback Lamar Jackson (ankle), had a 4.6% win probability with less than four minutes remaining in regulation, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. But Huntley needed just one minute and 51 seconds to engineer a game-tying touchdown drive. In overtime, the Ravens kept the pedal down, ramming away at Atlanta’s defense for seven-plus minutes on their way to a 14-play, 68-yard touchdown drive.

“No flinch, no panic,” coach Jesse Minter said of the comeback, the Ravens’ second in three weeks. Sunday’s rally wasn’t quite as dramatic as the last-second win over the Dallas Cowboys in Rio de Janeiro. That didn’t make it any less significant.

“That is a game that we have lost many times,” Hamilton said, “whether it is some fluky stuff happening or whatever. But the way the offense drove down there in OT ... and then followed it up with whatever eight-minute drive [in overtime] they had, finish it off with a touchdown, and then we get a stop on defense — that is just us getting over some sort of hump or dark cloud. I’m excited for the future.”

Any future with Hamilton in the picture ought to be bright. On Sunday, he had six tackles and allowed just two catches on three targets for 28 yards, according to SumerSports. He’s the only player in the NFL with an interception, a forced fumble, three tackles for loss and four passes defended this season — the early makings of a dark-horse Defensive Player of the Year campaign.

Still, there’s room for improvement. Even after helping to hold Atlanta, the NFL’s best offense over the past two weeks, to 367 yards (5.7 per play) over nearly 68 minutes of game clock, Hamilton said he didn’t think the defense played well. But he was happy to look for solutions after a win. The Ravens were headed in the right direction. Hamilton had helped them find their way.

“I know how sweet that is, to come back to your hometown with all your friends and family, especially on primetime television, where everybody’s watching,” defensive lineman Calais Campbell said. “For him to show up big in that big moment, it’s huge. I have said it a thousand times before, but big-time players make big-time plays in big-time games, and Kyle Hamilton is the best of us.”