Antonio Hamilton, a cornerback for the Arizona Cardinals, earned a starting position during training camp, but he won’t play in Week 1 due to injuries sustained in a strange cooking accident at his residence. Hamilton’s inclusion on the non-football injury list, which requires him to miss the first four weeks of the season, was one of the biggest surprises when the Cardinals revealed their 53-man roster this week.
It was unclear how Hamilton sustained his injury after dominating in training camp, but he gave the specifics this week. The corner said that on August 22, he had multiple second-degree burns on the lower half of his body as a result of a cooking accident. According to Hamilton, it was such a catastrophic accident that it might have “ended up deadly.”
“Had the greatest camp of my career and last Monday I had a accident that could’ve ended up deadly for me and my family,” Hamilton wrote on Twitter this week. “But instead I got the short end of it by having my feet severely burned (2nd degree). It was literally a freak accident and God spared me to only have these injuries.”
The incident included a fryer, and Hamilton had to be transported to the hospital after severely burning himself with frying oil, according to NFL.com. He was having one of his best training camps of his career, as Hamilton acknowledged. Kliff Kingsbury, the head coach of the Cardinals, even recently acknowledged that Hamilton had performed well enough to secure a starting position on Arizona’s defense.
Hamilton’s injury is a devastating setback because, in the words of the head coach, after a great training camp, he “had earned a starting spot.” Hamilton joined the Cardinals after spending a portion of the previous season on the practice squad, and he re-signed this summer. He is now in his second season with the organization.
The 29-year-old had mostly been considered as a special teams ace until reporting to camp this year. In the past, he had been granted starting duties on occasion, but only when injured players further up the depth chart took his place. After making his league debut with the Oakland Raiders in 2016, the former undrafted free agent spent time with the New York Giants, Kansas City Chiefs, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
