There is a lot to like about DaeSean Hamilton.
He’s thoughtful, not to mention a quiet kind of hilarious that sneaks up on you behind his soft spoken nature. In a world where being a college football player is enough to boost your ego to the sky, he’s down to earth. He defers to his teammates after good games and is honest when the spotlight is on him. He doesn’t ask to command the room’s attention, but he does anyway.
So to see Hamilton sit down just a few weeks prior to practice and look just a little bit worn out is a surprise. Maybe it’s just early, the sun is only just starting to creep up over the buildings outside the Lasch Football complex. Or maybe even the most energetic of us just don’t always bring our A-game. Whatever the case might be, something is clearly eating at Penn State’s senior receiver.
‘Personally I think as you can see stat-wise it was kind of a down year,’ Hamilton said reflecting on last season.
‘It was kind of a bit tougher to go from 82 catches to just 45, not to take anything away from Chris (Godwin) he had an awesome year and I was really happy for him. I was just hard on myself just trying to figure out what the difference was between two years ago and last year. During the year I let it get to me a little bit, especially during the first few games when I was seeing one catch, two catches a game or no catches, and I was thinking ‘OK maybe something is up, maybe something I’m doing or something I’m not doing correctly.”
And it’s hard to blame him really. In 2015 Hamilton’s 82 catches would have been good enough for Penn State’s single season record if not for Allen Robinson setting the bar at 97 receptions just the year prior. Hamilton by all reasonable accounts had a historic season that only just missed out on true history by a few months.
So to go from that to just 45 catches is a bit of career whiplash. In the first five games of 2015 Hamilton hauled in just 15 receptions. In 2014 through five games Hamilton had 36.
The result was a fair amount of soul searching. Hamilton watched the film, he worked harder to find that mojo he had just a year prior. In truth his production was likely more the result of a struggling offense coupled with the emergence of Chris Godwin as a receiving threat more than anything Hamilton did. Whatever the case might have been, as Hamilton turned his focus toward the positive and toward what he can control, the numbers followed along.
‘I shifted my focus in the latter part of the year and that’s when my catches and touchdowns and receptions started to go up,’ Hamilton said. ‘Last year I think it was disappointing from at least my point of view, just because I was expecting have an even better year and for it not to go that way, that was hard on me and a bit depressing and I was thinking that maybe I’m just not doing anything right anymore.’
Even with a down year Hamilton isn’t short on making a run for a few records, just 54 receptions shy of Penn State’s all-time career mark. Two, 100-yard games from passing Terry Smith on the career list and one of just five players to have had 100-yards receiving in a game along side another player in that same game.
So Hamilton knows he’s doing just fine, and he acknowledges that, but there is still a certain sense of something left to prove. Something to get back to.
And that’s why a move to the slot this offseason might do the trick. Hamilton will no longer be matched up against corners, it’ll be the slower linebackers and the defensive backs farther down the field that will have to handled his speed and physicality now. The result is a player who knows what he can do, rejuvenated by an opportunity to prove that he can still do it.
‘I think the move is a great move for me,’ Hamilton said. ‘I just think that it puts my strengths against other player’s weaknesses. Getting in there and being a little bit more physical it really excites me and being in there full time it really helps me to make my game more versatile and being able to show different elements of the game that I’ve always had.’
Penn State has maybe the deepest corps of receivers the program has seen since the Derrick Williams, Deon Butler and Jordan Norwood years. Anyone will be capable of taking that next step towards being a new star on Penn State’s new offense. There are a lot of new faces with big time potential and game changing abilities.
But with something to prove and plenty of experience to look back on, don’t forget about DaeSean Hamilton.
