Nevada safety Miles Hayes didn't start playing organized football until middle school, but he's been surrounded by the game for his entire life.
Growing up the son of a long-time NFL assistant coach, you might figure Hayes had a helmet on from the time he shed his diapers. But a family rule prohibited him from playing at a young age.
"I always wanted to play as soon as I could," Hayes said. "My dad, his dad had a rule, that we weren't allowed to play until seventh grade, and he followed that rule, so I didn't pick up organized football until seventh grade."
Some of Hayes' earliest memories of the game are playing backyard football with his family and going to Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati with his father, who was an assistant with the Bengals at the time.
"Just going down there every Saturday, watching the guys practice, watching the guys play, just feeling like a part of the Bengals, that was always pretty cool, so that stuff always sticks with me," Hayes said.
Hayes' father, Jay, was a linebackers coach at Wisconsin from 1995-1998 and coached in the NFL from 1999-2017, spending the majority of his career as the Bengals' defensive line coach.
"I was diehard fan, so when they lost, I was crying, when they won, I was yelling and screaming and all that," Hayes said. "I'd go to every home game, never went to an away game. They wouldn't let me on the team plane. I don't know why, but it was awesome."
Football has been a family affair for Hayes as his uncle, Jon, was a tight end in the NFL for nine seasons. His brother, Jesse, was a linebacker at Wisconsin from 2011-2015. Miles' career began at William & Mary where he played from 2015-20 before transferring to Nevada for the 2021 season. Unlike the others in his family, Miles is a safety rather than a lineman.
"My whole family is 6-3, 260 pounds," said Hayes, who is 6-3 and 190 pounds. "They played D-line, if not, they played linebacker. They don't do skill positions. It was one of those things where I had a late growth spurt, so I was still skinny. I had the ability to play skill positions."
While crediting his father playing the largest role in his football career, one of Hayes' high school coaches at Archbishop Moeller in Cincinnati, Dean Guyer, helped convince him to stay in the defensive backfield.
"My guy Dean Guyer, was, like, 'Just stick with it. Stick with safeties. I get it. I know you want to gain a bunch of weight and go play D-end now that you're tall.' I stuck with it and I believed him," Hayes said. "The first year sticking with it, I remember being embarrassed about how slow I felt, how my feet just weren't fast enough, I wasn't strong enough, but ever since then I just stuck with it."
Hayes signed with FCS school William and Mary out of high school. He redshirted as a true freshman in 2015 and tore his ACL during the first game of the 2016 season, sidelining him for the remainder of the season. While the injury set him back, it gave him a different perspective of the game.
"It's one of those things where it was tough for me, but I wasn't tough yet," Hayes said. "I was still a kid. I still had an immature mindset, where I didn't think I had to work super hard. I didn't think I had to work on all these things, my body, all these little muscles that eventually caught up to me. It was super rewarding to finally get on the field and be able to start the last two seasons and just play some college football like I had always wanted to. I had to work really hard for it, I didn't think it was gonna be like that, but it made me better so it is what it is."
Hayes, whose cousin, Jaxson, was was the No. 8 pick of the 2019 NBA draft, played in 27 games for William and Mary, including 14 starts. He recorded 61 tackles and three interceptions, all coming in 2019, his last season with the Tribe. With the FCS moving the fall 2020 season to spring 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hayes entered the transfer portal, unsure if there would still be a scholarship at William and Mary if he stayed with the team.
"It was one of those things where I kind of always wanted to transfer, I always wanted to test myself somewhere with more competition," Hayes said. "With that being said, if they would have kept me, I would have stayed. It was one of those things where COVID came and guys were coming in from the 2020 class. They had scholarships, and we only have (63) at the FCS level. So, it's one of those things where they just didn't have enough money to keep me around, couldn't guarantee it."
Hayes had plans to transfer to Nevada in the fall of 2020 but finished his classes at William & Mary that fall before making the trek to the West Coast last January and drove from Florida to Nevada in seven days. Hayes said he had only been out West once before moving to Nevada to watch his brother play in the Rose Bowl with Wisconsin.
"It's everything like the pictures, the mountains and the red rocks like everything was exactly how I imagined, honestly," said Hayes, who just participated in Nevada's recently completed spring camp. "So that was actually pretty cool."
Hayes' connection to Nevada came thanks to his uncle, Jon, who played with Nevada head coach Jay Norvell at Iowa in the 1980s. Norvell also knew Hayes' father from their time together as NFL assistants. Norvell has been looking to upgrade Nevada's secondary since the end of last season, adding three FBS/FCS transfers to the position.
"One of the things about the safety position is you've got to have vision and you've got to have field awareness and he has that," Norvell said of Hayes. "So I just think that experience really helps settle us in."
Hayes is entering his seventh season in college with redshirts in 2015, 2016 and 2020. While he's one of the oldest players on the team, Hayes is new to Nevada and still learning a lot.
"Everyone's peers here, everyone's on the same playing field," Hayes said. "Obviously there's some young guys that just got over here. For me, I'm brand new, still learning guys' names and I'm still learning about the team dynamics and everything so still getting used to that. But, honestly, it's easier for me, just being out here knowing what to expect from coaches, knowing what it's like to get coached hard, and it's been fun."
While Hayes said he'd like to be an impact player for Nevada's defense, his final season in college is all about winning.
"This is really good team," Hayes said. "I mean, the bottom line is if we're winning games and I'm impacting them somehow then that's awesome. That's all I can ask for."
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May 18, 2021 at 10:50PM
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Football is a family affair for Nevada safety transfer Miles Hayes - Nevada Sports Net
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