License to Kill: Jackson Hawes infusing Buffalo Bills (and the NFL) with a 'Full Send Mindset'
The great offensive innovation of 2025 is a man who loves cliff jumping off the field and pile-driving defenders on it. Meet the Buffalo Bills rookie tight end.
ORCHARD PARK, NY — He has zero regrets because quitting in the middle of a football play would defy his biology. Pads on. Pads off. Baltimore Ravens. His own teammates. The details don’t matter. Jackson Hawes knows one speed and one speed only. This rookie tight end approached Buffalo Bills training camp with zero guarantees of making the 53-man roster. So once he latched onto A.J. Epenesa, hell yeah Hawes was going to take the veteran defensive end for a ride.
In retrospect, he feels “like an idiot” for sparking a melee. But Hawes cannot help the reality that he’s an equal opportunity destroyer.
“I’ve got to try and make the team,” recalls Hawes. “And I ended up table-topping him over somebody.”
Hawes dumped Epenesa over left tackle Dion Dawkins and Epenesa screamed “Stop!" Stop!” with his ankle twisted up. Once he freed himself, the typically mild-mannered D-End wound up and cold-cocked Hawes. The rookie had pissed off many opponents before, but this was the first time in his life he was punched. He describes the force as more of a jolting, stiff arm-like slap.
“AJ’s strong, man,” he says. “It was a good punch. I felt it in my neck.”
Afterward, Sean McDermott offered a terse message to the rookie. The head coach wasn’t upset about Hawes’ overzealous effort in a July practice, no, he didn’t like that Hawes barely reacted to the punch. McDermott instructed Hawes to be a man and “bow up” when he gets smacked like that. Hawes agreed. The next time anyone tries punking him on the field, rest assured, he’ll defend his honor.
The next day, he buried the hatchet with Epenesa over chicken wings at Bar Bill’s Rochester location and everyone moved on.
The Bills can take great comfort in the fact that this wild man from Salt Lake City is on their side.
Forty-eight hours after the Bills were (again) eliminated by the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs, Brandon Beane repeated that this team would “keep kicking the door” until they knocked it down. In Hawes, the general manager secured a player who’s more apt to crouch into a three-point stance and ram directly through that door head first.
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X ‘n O creativity in this league is endless. Football’s brightest minds from McVay and/or Shanahan University experiment and innovate and — once a play works? — other teams copy it. Eras past, teams spent a full offseason studying the latest trends. Now, those trends proliferate on a week-to-week basis. Defenses adjust. And the life cycle of a particular innovation is much shorter. As everything gets carbon-copied across the league, football inevitably reverts back to physicality. Back to its roots. At its core, this sport is an exercise in moving a man against his will. Displacing your adversary from Point A to Point B.
For eight months, we all wondered how the Bills would evolve offensively. After a quiet free agency, Beane then used his first five draft picks on the defensive side of the ball. He didn’t get around to the offense, period, until Pick No. 173… and he selected a blocking tight end who spent five years at Yale and one at Georgia Tech. To many, this felt something like a cruel joke.
Three games in? The man who caught all of 16 passes his final collegiate season represents the single greatest offensive innovation in the AFC. Defenses NFL-wide have been so obsessed with trying to slow down high-flying offenses, the mere presence of an old-school tight end who can kick anyone’s ass is foreign.
Hawes is a glorious 60s/70s throwback who essentially time-traveled to 2025 with a club in one hand and his helmet in the other.
He relishes this sport’s barbarity.
“It’s the only time that you can fight someone. You can use that inner aggression: ‘Man, I hate that guy!’” says Hawes, clenching his teeth for effect. “You’re able to just let it shine in a controlled violent way.”
As he walks into the stadium, Hawes listens to the most chill EDM on his playlist. The ambient, soundscape variety to mellow himself out. Back in high school and college, he made the mistake of getting too hyped up those 2 to 3 hours before kickoff, crashed hard and ended up “drowsy” during the game. Staying calm helps. But once it’s time for warmups 15 minutes before the show begins? Or if he can slide the headphones on during halftime? Then, it’s time to crank the Limp Bizkit and Korn to full blast. At that point, the fight has arrived.
“I’m like, ‘Alright, ‘we’re about to get a little violent out there.’”
This daredevil who enjoys jumping off cliffs then spends each snap thoroughly pissing off defenders across the line of scrimmage.
He’s 24 years old now. As a professional athlete with so much at stake, he’s trying to slow down. But that’s no exaggeration. This rookie who plays through the echo of the whistle is admittedly a wild man off the field. Through his college years, he calls himself a “risk-taker.”
When I half-jokingly mention cliff jumping, he nods.
Yes, that’s been a go-to recreational activity.
Specifically “gainers” into Lake Powell. That is, Hawes will sprint at full speed, leap off the ledge and perform a backward somersault in the air as he dives into this reservoir on the Colorado River in southern Utah. About 400 miles south of his hometown, Hawes loved renting a houseboat or joining his buddy’s timeshare for a week. There’s no signal, forcing everyone to stay off their phone. (Which he loves.)
Then, they’d scope out areas to jump. The topography is full of slot canyons. Lake Powell has some 100-footers but, to be safe, Hawes tried to max out at 50 feet. He’d cruise through the water in a boat beforehand to get a read on elevation and make sure there aren’t any rocks sticking out. Then, it’s pretty simple. You sprint. You leap. You hurl your body backwards mid-air.
He’s also an avid skier. The more daunting a slope appears, the better. He welcomes all rocks, all ice, all bumps and flies down the hill as fast as possible.
No half-pipes, no trickeration necessary.
“I’ve always Full Sent it downhill,” Hawes says. “The Full Send mindset. Just bombing it. It certainly helped with my leg strength.”
Mom was an exceptional skier and could’ve competed competitively, Hawes adds, if she didn’t start a family instead. She’d shred the moguls. Dad was a rugby player growing up with his four older brothers. Jackson played for a year before focusing on football.
Oddly enough, Highland (Utah) High School didn’t even use a tight end. Hawes played wide receiver. The only time his hand was in the dirt was if he was cutting a defender on the backside of a play. Even then, he realized very early just how much he cherished the sport’s violence. Unlike most wide receivers, Hawes did not sprint away from contact. He felt an intrinsic pull toward the fire as a rail-thin sophomore.
“I was a receiver,” Hawes explains, “but I fell in love with stamping my face mask and my chest plate on guys out on the perimeter and I got good at doing that — the physical pop part of it. That’s really helped with my demeanor at the point of attack.”
The rookie who takes immense pride in “bashing skulls” explains this blocking technique and, uh, no. Those hyper-sensitive suits on Park Avenue will not be incorporating these words into their next propaganda campaign trying to convince the Moms of America that football is safe.
“See exactly what you’re going to hit,” Hawes says. “It’s not instinctual to go and run into somebody full speed. I think the best thing is to have laser pointers for eyes and see through the contact.”
Such tenacity is borne out of necessity.
From little league to high school to college to the NFL, he’s never been the biggest guy on the field. He doesn’t have large hands (9 1/8 inches) or long arms (32 1/8 inches) and admits “252 pounds” may be generous. Thus, for years, Hawes has forced himself to win with intangibles above all else.
“Playing through the whistle, striking, pestering guys,” he adds.
That’s putting it mildly. Zero in on Hawes’ 77 NFL snaps to date and you’ll see a player who masterfully crawls under the skin of opponents like a tick.
It’s no accident. There’s an art to his agitation.
Head coach Brody Benson remembers Hawes taking off in 11th grade. Benson describes himself as a relic — he’s one of the only coaches in the state still running the triple option. And at Highland, he sent the action toward Hawes’ side of the field as much as possible because he knew the wide receiver would always drive a cornerback into no man’s land.
Hawes blocked so relentlessly through the entirety of the play — OK, maybe a half-second extra — that it drove defenders mad. They started slapping him across the helmet after the whistle. And shoving him. And shouting profanities. Soon, it became Highland’s goal for Hawes to draw at least one unsportsmanlike penalty a game.
Benson thinks he batted at least .500.
“You talk about being a gnat and getting under people’s skin,” Benson says, “he’s relentless. He would not stop. He had a motor and he was fine with being that guy. He took it as his personal mission to go out and get a flag called by somebody that he’s blocking just based on them getting pissed off and that he won’t go away.”
Hawes never cared who he offended. Never a rah-rah type of leader, he had no problems calling out his own buddies for not going all-out. Nor did he care if a teammate called him out.
He held everyone to a high expectation, thus let absolutely nothing slide.
There’s a deeper method to this madness, too. As Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady calls 10, 20, 30 rushing attempts over the course of a game, that outside linebacker on the edge of the defense will become quite annoyed with No. 85… and stop thinking about the stuff that really matters.
“If they’re thinking about me being all pesky with them,” Hawes says, “they’re not thinking about the ball carrier. They’re like, ‘Screw this guy!’ If I can get him to worry more about me than James, it’s a good thing.”
When Hawes headed to Yale University, like most Ivy Leaguers, he wasn’t eyeing an NFL career. He figured he’d get into finance and carve out a career in investment banking or private equity. “I kind of was like, ‘Hey, I’ll just get a great degree and have fun playing football,’” Hawes says. His second season, however, he split reps with the starter. When scouts started passing through New Haven, Conn., Hawes heard one from his favorite team as a kid, the Ravens, was interested in his game. That’s when his mentality started to shift. If he improved each year maybe the NFL was a realistic destination.
The only problem was that he was a non-factor in the passing game. Through 29 games — ’19 to ’23, a Covid cancellation included — he caught only 35 passes for 371 yards and six touchdowns with the Bulldogs. There’s no sugarcoating it. He was frustrated with his limited role as a receiver. It wasn’t until that 2024 season at Georgia Tech that Hawes realized his blocking prowess as a traditional “Y” tight end could be weaponized at the next level. In the Yellow Jackets’ season-opening, 24-21 upset win over No. 10-seeded Florida State, Hawes surprised himself by how often he put defenders on their keister. (He thinks the final tally was seven.)
Georgia Tech ran for 190 yards on 36 attempts with three touchdowns.
He learned to embrace the grime and started to view each gameplan as a heavyweight fight. Hawes closely studied the players he’d be smashing into each Saturday.
Now, with the Bills, he does plenty of visualization throughout the week.
“You’re honing in on what jersey numbers they’ve got on,” Hawes says, “and visualizing your success throughout the week: How you’re going to fight ‘em when something goes wrong. Visualizing everything. You’re thinking, ‘These are going to be my opponents’ and constantly thinking about ‘em. The more that you care about this game, it’s easy to think about it.”
The result is a novel species pro defenses are not prepared to face.
Over the last two decades, the tight end position has been justifiably basketballified. A healthy evolution, to be sure. But it’s led to a dearth of tight ends capable of pummeling anyone in the run game. The tight ends who can block today offer no unpredictability. If Blocking Tight End X enters the game, it’s the equivalent of Shaquille O’Neal or Patrick Ewing lining up for a 3-pointer. There’s no need to close out, no need to offer that player any respect as a receiver.
The number of tight ends capable of bashing defensive ends 1 on 1 and dashing downfield as a receiver are exceptionally rare.
That’s why those developments in the fourth quarter of Buffalo’s berserk 41-40 Week 1 comeback win over Baltimore set such a magnificent precedent for this offense. With 3:06 remaining, off a Derrick Henry fumble, quarterback Josh Allen laced a 29-yarder up the right seam to Hawes. Buffalo only ran this play a couple times in walkthroughs and the rookie never saw the ball.
The reigning MVP trusted him in a big spot and — as a result — coordinators must honor the fact that Hawes, serving the role of an extra lineman, can make them pay as a receiver.
Two weeks later, he caught his first pro touchdown.
This evolution has been three years in the works. After getting KO’d by the Cincinnati Bengals in the divisional round of the 2022 playoffs, Beane and McDermott made a concerted effort to man up on the line of scrimmage. A calculated gamble. Offenses often slip into the time machine back at their own peril. The presence of Allen, however, gives Buffalo the liberty to seek such a balance.
Guard Connor McGovern, signed the ensuing spring of ‘23, has played a major role in this shift.
When Brady took over as OC, he says the emphasis changed to “chunking” defenses bite… by bite… by bite… on the ground to bait bodies into the box. Then, Allen makes ‘em pay deep. A year ago, Alec Anderson would enter the game as a sixth offensive lineman. He was a nasty presence in his own right but McGovern admits everyone knew the Bills were going to run.
Hawes keeps all 11 players guessing. He’s also not a tight end who merely shields a defender.
“He blocks the hell out of people,” McGovern says. “We knew it was serious back in OTAs when he first got here and learned the offense. We’re not even in pads and he’s taking on Joey Bosa, Greg Rousseau. He’s driving them down and moving them out. We’re like ‘Alright, this guy’s for real.’ … He’s just like us finishing through blocks and pushing guys down. He gets up on the ‘backer and wheels people out.”
Buffalo can now win a football game at each extreme of the spectrum. Against the Ravens, Allen threw the ball 46 times. Against the New York Jets, seven days later, the Bills ran it 43 times.
“No one’s going to bat an eye at the situation,” McGovern says. “Whatever we get, we’re taking full advantage of it and everyone’s bought into that mindset. It’s like, ‘Alright, fuck what they have. We know what we can do and we’re going to beat you how we want to beat you.”
Adds Hawes: “The more the skill players can do, the more Josh can do, the more the O-Line can do, it’s more things for the defense to think about during the week. And when there’s a lot to think about, it’s hard to cover everything.”
He’ll be a cult hero soon. Honestly, anyone who objectively loves the purity of football should be rooting for Jackson Hawes to pillage defenses.
We’ve lamented the soft direction of this sport for a while now. Scowl at a receiver a second too long, sneeze on a quarterback, signal a first down with an index finger and commissioner Roger Goodell just may personally escort you to prison. Too often, the NFL cowardly sprints away from what makes its product great: inherent physicality.
It’s all trickling down, too. Benson sees youth football coaches trying to implement exotic play calls they see on NFL Sundays. They’ll put 7-year-olds in shotgun spread offenses instead of teaching kids the basic fundamentals of blocking and tackling.
Nobody wants to play offensive line.
When it’s time to block, kids are too often clueless.
“I’m like, ‘You guys are ridiculous. Line up and hand the ball to your best athlete and teach the kids up front how to block and get in the way,” says Benson, who now coaches at Woods Cross (Utah) H.S. “Football has become so much of the finesse game and guys being pretty and all that. In this state, I’m a dinosaur. And I love it just because we can physically get after people. That’s what football’s about.”
There’s hope in Hawes trotting onto the field with Dawson Knox and Dalton Kincaid as a third tight end.
There’s hope in any team trying anything to assert its physical dominance. Teams are coming around. As future HOF’er J.J. Watt pointed out, blocking tight ends, running backs and fullbacks are all being valued more with defenses relying so much on shell coverages and smaller linebackers.
Thus, in spite of itself, the NFL is essentially hardening into that famous Mike Tyson quote: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Players are taking precedence over plans.
“You’re starting to see a swing,” Benson says. “There’s only so much you can do before you have to go back. Football is going through that type of cycle. The ability to just physically move a human, there’s something beautiful about that.”
He sees Hawes as an ideal torchbearer and an A+ teammate who’ll fit right in with the Bills.
“He’s a wonderful human being, hard-ass worker, tough-ass kid,” he says.
One of their old conversations comes to mind. Benson remembers talking to Hawes about cartoons. They both agreed that “Tom and Jerry” was the best ever because the two main characters never even speak. Way back then, Hawes recognized the power of body language. To this day, Benson references this chat with his players. The cartoon is also emblematic of Hawes’ playing style. He barely says a peep on the field. In that season opener, Hawes recalls locking horns with 6-foot-6, 262-pound Tavius Robinson. Re-enacting the scene here at One Bills Drive, he says Robinson yelled “Yeahhh!” and he howled “Yeahhhh!” right back. (“Grown ass men,” he adds, “out here hitting each other. It’s pretty cool.”)
Like Jerry, the mouse, he tends to serve as an exasperating pain in the ass.
These days, he and Epenesa are bash brothers. On a first kick return against Miami, Hawes clamped into Dante Trader Jr. The rookie safety didn’t like it, tried hurling Hawes to the ground and Epenesa two-hand shoved him to the ground. (In fairness, Trader supplied his finest Vlade Divac impersonation, flailing to the turf.)
On the sideline, McDermott didn’t seem too upset about the ensuing 15-yard penalty. He wants players sticking of for themselves and each other.
It’s taken a while but these Bills have toughened up. They can win a rock fight.
“I think that you realize this is a physical organization that you’re stepping into,” Hawes says. “McDermott lays the framework of being smart players, fundamental players. And that last one is being nasty and kind of having… ‘my guy is absolutely not going to make the block’ or ‘that runner is absolutely not going to get past me’ kind of mentality. And special teams, too. ‘We’re going to run down, we’re going to hit somebody to set the tone.’ You see it in all three phases and I think that’s what makes this place really special.”
Rest assured, Sean and Brandon. Hawes is putting all cliff jumping on hold. Bring up Holiday Valley, however, and he’s quite intrigued. Whenever he does get the chance to look into the sprawling ski resort 40 miles south of Orchard Park, Hawes will learn about “The Wall,” an aptly named double black diamond with a pitch of 39 degrees.
The thrill may be tempting. Until then, he’ll get his fix on the football field. Any teammate who couldn’t stand his motor in August sure loves it now. As this chat wraps up, Hawes assures he’s hit up all of the top wing spots in WNY — Nine-Eleven Tavern, Elmo’s, etc. — and says he can’t wait to dine at Mulberry this night.
Come Sunday, he’ll feast on another opponent: the New Orleans Saints.
Jackson Hawes is right at home.
He listens to Limp Bizkit and Korn?? Be still my millennial beating heart.