Go ahead. Try to find a scar, any scar. Here, he'll make it easy for you. He'll tilt his head so the back left side is spotlighted under a stain of April sun searing through his living room window. He'll part his trimmed hair, daring you to spy any scabbed gashes, any stitch marks, any black or blue. Ken Hamlin knows how his head looked in October, after he was in a bar fight that ended when he was beaten unconscious with a metal street sign. He figured the marks would be there for good. But look now: no scars. No swelling. No lines snaking through his stubble. It's as if the fractured skull that cost the heavy-hitting Seahawks free safety most of the 2005 season and the Super Bowl—the one that threatened his life and left him bedridden with headaches—never existed. Just like that, it's been erased from Hamlin's skin, and his psyche. "Everything looks good," says Hamlin, rubbing his head. "Everything feels good. I'm ready to roll."
Of course, Ken Hamlin is always ready to roll. And that may be the problem.
DON'T TELL Hamlin that he should have walked away. Anyone who lectures him on the topic—and plenty of columnists did while he was in intensive care—does not get how he's wired, how a lot of NFL players are wired, how just about every NFL team is wired. These guys are trained not to walk away, paid not to. It's a pride thing. And for Hamlin, who last fall was on the cusp of being one of the league's best safeties, the inability to back down is as unchangeable as his eye color. If his boys are in trouble, he's in trouble. "It's just the way that I am," Hamlin says. And that's a good thing, right?
Hamlin has always been that way. When he was a boy, his mother, Venita Gyimah, made her son promise not to get into fights in elementary school. Made him shake on it, too. But some days, he'd come home toting a pink slip. Michael Hamlin Jr., one of his two older brothers, remembers Ken as "a little rough and a little rowdy." Derek Rosenthal, Hamlin's best friend, says Ken "can be a hothead. But that's the way he survives."
And how he thrives. The 25-year-old Hamlin didn't get a football scholarship to Arkansas because he was a member of the National Honor Society and vice president of his senior class at Frayser High in Memphis; he got it because Danny Nutt, a Razorbacks assistant coach, marveled at how "Ken knocked people's heads off." During his three years in Fayetteville, Hamlin didn't set the Razorbacks career record for tackles by worrying about his health; he did it by playing a position perfectly suited to his personality: free safety, where on every down he chose which battle to join. And he didn't become Seattle's defensive captain by going light on receivers; he made his NFL mark as a rookie in 2003 by hitting Saints wideout Donte' Stallworth so hard the receiver's helmet popped into the air like a champagne cork.
Hamlin's enforcer attitude quickly turned him into a fearsome team leader. In training camp last season, second-year cornerback Jordan Babineaux was intimidated by Hamlin's habit of screaming at him after Babineaux blew an assignment. But he quickly became a Hamlin loyalist during a game last September, when Babineaux tangled with several Cardinals linemen. Hamlin flew in from the secondary to insert himself between his skinny teammate and the 330-pounders. "Ken will go to war for you," Babineaux says.
Hamlin's self-worth is tied to his ability to protect those around him. His father, Michael, spent his life doing just that, in the Army and with the Memphis police department. Asking Hamlin to switch off that mentality when he's not in pads is an affront to the way he was raised and how he earns a living. He's a hitter, a punisher. He's always ready to roll. And he's aware that that'sa dangerous way to live—so aware that he had "Ballin' out of control" tattooed on his left arm and "Lord give me strength" painted above his heart.
Last Oct. 16, when Hamlin wanted to celebrate Seattle's 42-10 home win over the Texans, he wasn't looking for a fight. But he wasn't going out of his way to avoid one, either. The spot Hamlin and his crew chose, Larry's Nightclub in Pioneer Square, was so notorious for violence (and for taunting Seahawks) that its liquor license was suspended in January. And sure enough, as Hamlin—along with Seahawks defensive tackle Rocky Bernard and Ken's other older brother, Keith—exited Larry's at around 1:30 a.m., a fight broke out. Ken and Keith were in the middle of it. The police report says that as Hamlin left Larry's, he reached for his girlfriend and accidentally put his hand on an unidentified man's back. The man, described by witnesses as 6'4'' and 215 pounds, interpreted the gesture as a shove and pushed back.
A crowd of 70 to 100 people quickly formed in front of Larry's. Five, 10 minutes passed. Hamlin, in a long-sleeve white shirt, was being restrained by security guards. He was enraged, he says, because he saw Keith "getting attacked" in a collage of punches, one of which broke his jaw. "I was trying to get to my brother," says Hamlin, who wrestled into the melee.
As bouncers used pepper spray to break up the crowd, Hamlin turned away, steaming down South Main Street, with Keith and Bernard lagging behind. Then, at the corner of Main and First Avenue South, in front of a Quiznos, Hamlin was hit by a forearm, a blow he didn't see coming. He dropped like a blow-up doll that had been deflated. Lying unconscious, he was kicked and punched by one man while another took cracks at his head with a four-foot traffic sign. "Basically," says Hamlin, "I got jumped."
Still, Hamlin knows he was lucky. If not for the 6'3'', 293-pound Bernard, who rushed up to push away Hamlin's assailants, Hamlin might be dead. And he was lucky to arrive at Harborview Medical Center's emergency room with only a fractured skull, three golf-ball-size blood clots and tissue damage in his brain, and a broken right hand. But just because Hamlin cheated death doesn't mean he wishes he had walked away. "I don't regret anything about it," he says.
After the fight, Mike Holmgren forbade any of his players from going to Pioneer Square after dark. And the organization went about trying to help its player heal. Teammates visited Hamlin in the hospital. So did Holmgren, who came with his wife. So did GM Tim Ruskell, who elected to pay Hamlin the $245,882 remaining of his $380,000 salary, even though his injuries weren't football-related. The Seahawks decided—as their groggy defensive leader's legs dangled off a bed too small for a 6'2'', 209-pound man, as antiseizure medication pumped through his system, as doctors asked if he knew his name and whereabouts, as the shades were drawn and the TV kept off to avoid headaches—that the rest of the season would be dedicated to Hamlin. So the team rallied around him, brought him game balls, had him raise the 12thman flag before the divisional playoff game, and asked him to lead the final cheer in the DBs' huddle before the NFC title game. "He was the victim of a crime and was fighting for his life," says Ruskell. "We wanted to support him."
But it's what the Seahawks didn't do that illuminates what players and coaches and, face it, fans really want from their football players. No one with the Seahawks told Hamlin to walk away next time. No one fined him. No one questioned what happened, even though there were stories that Hamlin was more instigator than protector. No one told him he had to change his ways. No one told Hamlin that he should, in fact, regret what happened. Regret would indicate that his wiring had changed, that Hamlin had changed, that their fearless, ball-hawking safety might one day hesitate on the field.
And they want him ready to roll.
LOOK AT Hamlin now. His head is down. He's lunging at a receiver, leading with his helmet's crown, pining for contact. It's May, and the Hawks are holding minicamp on a typically damp Seattle day. Hamlin just walked onto the field, entering the final year of his contract as if he'd never left: helmet buckled, gloves unstrapped, ankles taped. His name was called with the firstteam defense, and from there he assumed his old role. During bump-and-run drills, he rides receivers hard, topping off each play with an extra shove. Now, during seven-on-seven drills, he's itching to punish people.
Tony Brown, a rookie receiver from Tennessee, runs a comeback route. Hamlin sees the ball headed Brown's way and he's off. At this moment, as Hamlin bows and prepares to unload, it doesn't matter that his head was fractured nearly seven months ago. It doesn't matter that Seahawks doctors haven't cleared him to participate in contact drills and probably won't until late in training camp. Hell, it doesn't even matter that this drill is noncontact. What matters is that Hamlin, for better or worse, feels alive again.
As Brown catches the ball, Hamlin pulls up, frustrated that contact isn't allowed during minicamp. So he smacks his hands together, mimicking the pop of the explosion he craves. It's a feeling he longs for, injured head or not. "There's one way I play the game," Hamlin says. "All out. And I can't wait for that first hit."
But Hamlin doesn't know yet how he will feel if those collisions bring headaches. Or if the blood clots come back. Or if he finds himself outside a club in some other neighborhood after a big win and tempers heat up. "I know I'm not invincible," he says. "I've got to grow up and be more of a man." Not that he thinks walking away could in any way prove his manhood or maturity. After all, when Hamlin tells you what he's learned from the past year—"I've got a hard head"—he does so with pride. And without any scars.