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TE Ryan Hamby (Official Thread)

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12/30/05

<H1 class=red>One final chance for Hamby

</H1>

Friday, December 30, 2005 Doug Lesmerises

Plain Dealer Reporter

Scottsdale, Ariz.- Ryan Hamby isn't seeking relief or redemption.
"If you asked for the perfect ending for him, you'd say he'd catch the winning touchdown," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. "Of course, you'd want that for every guy. If he's put in a position to do that, he'll come through."

Hamby's not asking for that much. All he wants is one last game.

Ohio State's senior tight end will get that in the Fiesta Bowl after a torn knee ligament in practice knocked him out of the final four games of the regular season. His voice catching, Hamby admitted the nine weeks off gave him time, too much time, to relive his dropped touchdown pass against Texas in the second game of the season. That play in a 25-22 loss elicited several hate e-mails.

"It's been a real tough year," Hamby said. "It's something I had to deal with. It's a struggle, but I finally feel like I'm back and I can be myself and go out and play football the way I know how to play.

"It means a lot to me. I'm going to play like I played the national championship year, play like a little kid."

His return comes against the team that was on the family television every Saturday when he was a little kid, his father a former Notre Dame walk-on. It's the Irish that rely on the tight end in their passing game, Anthony Fasano grabbing 45 passes for 564 yards this year. Hamby and backups Marcel Frost and Brandon Smith combined for 20 catches and 177 yards.

Hamby didn't require surgery and said his knee is healed, his knee brace no longer needed. He's been working with the first team as the Buckeyes began to ease down their practice schedule. He sympathizes with injured linebacker Bobby Carpenter, knowing how hard it would have been to end his career without this final chance.

"I'm glad I don't have to deal with that," he said. "I just don't care about anything. I'm just playing football and having fun with a smile on my face."
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1/1/06

Hamby has healed since dropped pass vs. Texas

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Ken Gordon

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

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TEMPE, Ariz. — The mid-morning sun is bright and warm, the air is fresh. Ryan Hamby breathes in deeply, as if the Arizona weather has a healing effect.

The Ohio State tight end spent most of this season tortured by the memory of his dropped pass in the end zone on Sept. 10 against Texas. He got hate mail and, for weeks, did not venture out of his apartment except for classes.

Adding injury to insult, he suffered a torn knee ligament in October, forcing him to miss the final four regular-season games.

He’s healthy now, inside and out. He has faced down his demons and come away smiling. For Hamby, more than any other Buckeye, Monday’s Fiesta Bowl carries great significance.

"It means a lot to me," he said. "I’m going to play like I played in the national championship year — play like a little kid. I’m just happy, I can breathe a sigh of relief now, and I’m just excited to play again one last time as a Buckeye and just go out there and give it my all."

Among the many corrosive thoughts Hamby battled after the Texas game was the unfairness of it all. He felt like one flub would erase everything he had done during a fine career.

He is a four-year letter-winner with 46 games and 28 starts to his credit, including the 2003 Fiesta Bowl national-title game. He has 45 catches and five touchdowns.

"When it first happened, that’s the first thing I said is I’m going to leave Ohio State thinking that I don’t want people to remember Ryan Hamby for dropping that pass," he said. "Most people would die to be a four-year letterman, most people would give anything for that. You can’t look at it like, ‘Man, one play defines your whole career.’ "

But at the same time, athletes realize that’s how it works. Ask Bill Buckner, whose flubbed ground ball cost the Boston Red Sox the 1986 World Series. The play still is brought up nearly 20 years later.

"It’s totally unfair, but in the same sense, we play in those big games and we’re remembered by them," offensive lineman Doug Datish said. "It’s unfortunate for (Hamby), because there were tons of plays in that game that could’ve gone either way that would’ve changed the outcome."

In the immediate aftermath, Hamby locked himself away, dealing with it by himself. He said he didn’t socialize for three or four weeks.

"I just didn’t want to be seen," he said. "Even some of my good friends, even (OSU basketball player) Matt Sylvester, one of my best friends since eighth grade, even gave me a voice mail, ‘Hey Ryan, what’s up? Call me. I’m not going to even talk about football, I just want to see what you’re doing.’

"It was something I had to deal with and I had to deal with myself my own way."

In that effort, he drew strength from his teammates, who he said never said anything negative. His parents, Steve and Debbie Michalski, also were a source of support.

"My stepdad kind of hit me with a reality shot," Hamby said. "He said, ‘If this is the worst thing that’s going to happen in your life, you’ve got a great life.’ After thinking about that phrase, you can’t put it any other way."

But the best therapy is getting cleared to play again. He said he’s 100 percent now, and will start against Notre Dame. Coach Jim Tressel sounded more cautionary, as if Hamby’s playing time will be limited.

Tressel is pulling for Hamby to do something big Monday.

"If you ask for a perfect ending for him, you’d say he catches the winning touchdown," Tressel said. "Ryan Hamby is a kid, whatever we need done, he’ll do. And if he’s put in position to do that, he’ll come through."

Hamby said he doesn’t need to do anything dramatic. The important thing for him is that he came through the fire and the burns are almost healed. And probably no player will savor his last game as a Buckeye more than Hamby will.

"I can truly say it took me most of the year to get over that moment,"

Hamby said. "But I think I can look at myself in the mirror and say ‘I’m over it.’

"So when I’m walking out on that field Monday, I’m going to take a deep breath and kind of smile. That’s how I’m going to play the game."

[email protected]
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crazybuckfan40 said:
This is great news for a great kid. He didnt have the great year he was expecting to have, but he is a buckeye and we should support him through ups and downs. Lets hope he has a good final game and send him out right.
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Right on. This guy has given just as much as any other player on the team. He is a four year letterman.

Go Hambone, GO Brandon.
They are Buckeyes in every sense of the word.
 
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5/4/06

Rookie relishes 2nd shot
Adversity molded tight end Hamby

Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler

Ryan Hamby's new beginning kicks off next week at the Bengals' mini-camp for rookies.

He'll be the undrafted tight end signed after the team could find nobody at his undermanned position to suit them in rounds one through seven. To the fans who had visions of a Ditka bowling over the pass defenders not preoccupied with Chad Johnson, the acquisition of Hamby, local though he is, was not a woo-hoo type of transaction.

But it was to him.

For the big guy from Moeller High (where he was a sophomore on the 1999 state championship basketball team), this is not just a homecoming. It's the chance of a lifetime. Make that, the second chance of a lifetime.

The first came at Ohio State, where Hamby, after redshirting, was good enough to letter for four years. At 6-feet-5, 255 pounds, he was brawny enough and sufficiently well-trained to block as a tight end must - especially for the Buckeyes or Bengals - and sporty enough that he, according to last year's OSU media guide, "can stretch a defense vertically with his speed ... (and is) capable of making the spectacular one-handed catch."

That description was written up before the 2005 season. In his first three, Hamby had certainly shown all of the above. As a redshirt freshman on the national championship team, he started five games as part of a set involving two tight ends. He had the same kind of year as a sophomore - catching more passes, actually, than the guy ahead of him, Ben Hartsock, who now plays for the Indianapolis Colts - and by his junior season was starting every time Ohio State chose to put a tight end in the lineup. By then, though, the Buckeye offense - with Maurice Clarett and Craig Krenzel out of the picture - featured the likes of Troy Smith, Santonio Holmes and Ted Ginn Jr.

"The fact of the matter is, I caught more passes from Krenzel than I did in the new spread offense we started," Hamby said. "He knew you didn't always have to go for the fade, but a 10-yard outlet to the tight end is OK.

In a way, I had my great times with the double-tight-end set."

The great times, for Hamby, did not include his senior season. They especially did not include the second game of it, when OSU lost by three points to Texas, the eventual national champion.

Playing in front of a typically teeming home crowd, the Buckeyes led by three in the third quarter when Hamby worked himself free in the center of the end zone. The pass hit him where it should have. But he bobbled it, and as he attempted to finally pull the ball in, he was leveled by a Longhorn.

Ohio State had to settle for a field goal.

"The situation was that I catch that ball 10 times out of 10," Hamby said the other night, able to talk freely about it now that his life is moving ahead. "I can go back to Moeller High School, and I can't ever remember dropping a ball like that. I catch everything. More than anybody in the world, I wanted to catch that ball, and if you think I didn't, you're crazy." Apparently, some people thought he didn't. Or that he did, and was just a chump.

There were e-mails. There were messages on his cell phone.

There was profanity. There was vitriol. There was hate.

There was a death threat, and then another.

"It was stuff like, 'If I see you out, I'm gonna' ... you know. I deleted them all."

But they connected. They administered a hurt that no Michigan linebacker could ever muster.

"I'd be sitting here lying if I didn't say that my senior year had some serious ups and downs," the rookie allowed. "It wasn't the senior year I'd want anybody to have.

"I was down on myself real hard. It put me in a funk for a while. But it's the old cliché that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. If you want to judge Ryan Hamby the football player on his senior year, you haven't seen Ryan Hamby the football player."

That fellow intends to show up on May 12, fit and uncommonly ready. He has overcome the knee injury that, later in the year, kept him out of the four games leading up to Ohio State's victory over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, for which he was back in the lineup. With the help of supportive teammates like A.J. Hawk, he has also overcome the beating put on him by himself and those whose unconscionable remarks shouldn't have to come with the territory.

Another athlete might have lost his loyalty under the ache of such harsh circumstances. Hamby chose, instead, to embrace the gracious fans who overwhelmed the repugnant others. He chose his peers and his school.

"Ohio State," he said, "is the tradition, the teammates, the guys you play with. I hold it with respect and pride that I played Ohio State football. To me, it's the best program in the country, hands down.

"To play at Ohio State, it shows that I'm not just a chump. I know I'm a good football player."

Evidently, the Bengals feel the same way. They had Hamby's agent on the phone within minutes of the draft's conclusion. So did representatives of the Dolphins and Redskins; but the embattled Buckeye had nothing to prove to Miami or Washington.

"It was a no-brainer," he said. "I've been very motivated to go out there and let them know I can still play football. There's no part of me that's even thinking about doing something else. I absolutely love football.

"And this is the perfect way to demonstrate that."

Hamby grew up as a Bengals fan but had never been to one of their games until last year, when Krenzel got him tickets to see Indianapolis. That day, two Cincinnati tight ends combined for two catches and 17 yards. One of them is no longer with the team. Meanwhile, Hamby recalls correctly that "Dallas Clark (6 for 125) tore us up."

That's the kind of thing he's now dreaming about in Bengals colors. That, and a pass headed his way in the center of the end zone, which he has no doubt he will catch. Every time.

Contact Lonnie Wheeler at [email protected].
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"Ohio State," he said, "is the tradition, the teammates, the guys you play with. I hold it with respect and pride that I played Ohio State football. To me, it's the best program in the country, hands down."
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It's worth highlighting that quote from Ryan Hamby.
 
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