The Ravens were in the market for a veteran who could complement starters Kyle Hamilton and Malaki Starks. Under new Head Coach Jesse Minter, Hamilton will continue to have a versatile role where he moves around the defense, and the Ravens needed a reliable third safety who projects to play significant snaps.<\/p>\n
The Ravens had a void at safety after the reported free agent departures of Alohi Gilman (Chiefs) and Ar’Darius Washington (Giants).<\/p>\n
Hawkins was a 15-game starter for the AFC champion Patriots last season and led them with four interceptions.<\/p>\n
He also had 71 tackles, six passes defensed, 1.5 sacks, and five quarterback hits. Hawkins earned the 12th-highest Pro Football Focus grade among all starting NFL safeties.<\/p>\n
Hawkins earned a 27.3% hawk percentage \u2013 the percentage of targets where the defender makes a play on the ball. That was the ninth-highest percentage of any defensive player in the NFL who was targeted at least 20 times, per Next Gen Stats.<\/p>\n
Hawkins, 28, was a fourth-round pick of the Atlanta Falcons in 2020. He became a full-time starter in his third season but was waived midway through his fourth year and claimed by the Los Angeles Chargers.<\/p>\n
He signed with the Patriots before the 2024 season and started seven games that year before stepping into the full-time role last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ravens were in the market for a veteran who could complement starters Kyle Hamilton and Malaki Starks.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[103558,111835,7,4609,781,20472,7895,6,1049,3571],"class_list":["post-808698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-2026-free-agency","tag-2026-free-agency-tracker","tag-football","tag-free-agency","tag-general","tag-inline-news","tag-jaylinn-hawkins","tag-nfl","tag-ryan-mink","tag-transactions"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116217835956631489","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}