2018 NFL Draft: DaeSean Hamilton is a prospect on the rise

2018 NFL Draft: Penn State wide receiver DaeSean Hamilton is a prospect on the rise, and part of a very special class at Penn State…

Football came easy to DaeSean Hamilton at a young age.

His father introduced him to the game when he was five years old, and above the other sports he played, football has always been his forté.

Watching Hamilton run routes for Penn State is definitely easy on the eyes.

Hamilton was part of a recruiting class at Penn State that decided to overlook sanctions and punishment the university was facing from the NCAA because they had formed a bond in the recruiting process, and they saw the bigger picture.

“I was recruited to go there in the time when they had sanctions.” Hamilton said in an exclusive interview with NFL Mocks. “Throughout the whole process they expressed the importance of getting a guy like me. They were honest through the whole process. A lot of the guys I was getting recruited with had become my friends throughout the recruiting process.

Really it just came down to loving the environment at Penn State, the campus, and the coaches.”

“We wanted to enjoy the college football experience, work hard, and enjoy playing football with one another. The first few years, that’s all guys got to look forward to. Once the talent started rolling in, guys started coming to the university, and our chemistry started going up, we saw a shift. The culture around here has shifted.”

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There’s no doubt about the culture shift at Penn State. Hamilton was among one of the better Penn State teams we have seen in recent memory and certainly held his own this past year among giants like Saquon Barkley, who will be a top 10 NFL Draft pick, earning second-team All-Big 10 honors and getting invited to the East-West Shrine Game as well as the Reese’s Senior Bowl.

After an impressive Shrine game, Hamilton was called up to the Senior Bowl where he made a significant impression, rarely dropping a pass and showing off his ability to create separation with sharp routes.

“The Senior Bowl was pretty fun. You learn basically a rough sketch of what a team’s system is like. What type of terminology a team uses, concepts — it was pretty fun to get a taste of what an NFL team would be like. Each experience you just build on taking in a lot of information. Those weeks aren’t really too hard for guys that understand football.”

Understanding football is not something Hamilton kept to himself while at Penn State. One thing he’s known for in the scouting community is being a mentor to younger players at Penn State. Heck, one of the guys he took under his wing even got into the NFL a year ahead of him…

“I really took a lot of guys under my wing in college. Guys like Chris Godwin, who’s already in the NFL — he was a freshman coming in when I was already a sophomore. It was really just guys getting each other better, pushing each other every single day. We just learned that working this hard is going to lead to positive results. The harder you work the easier things come to you. The easier your goals are within reach.”

Now the ultimate goal of playing in the NFL is within reach for Hamilton. In a draft class that is considered relatively weak at the receiver position, he stands out as one of the ‘safest’ selections.

After running in the 4.4 range and showing out at the Penn State pro day, day two is not out of the question for Hamilton and he will be a very good player for an NFL team to add to their receiver group.

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