A dejected Geno Stone sat in teammate Anthony Levine’s apartment in December 2020. Stone, a rookie seventh-round pick, had just been released by the Ravens and claimed via waivers by the Houston Texans.
“I don’t want to go to Houston. I want to stay in Baltimore,” Levine recalled Stone telling him. Levine, who had become something of a mentor, talked with Stone into the wee hours of the night. They talked about life and hopes and dreams. Keep grinding, Levine told him, and things will work out.
Three seasons later, Stone is back in Baltimore, and the safety has gone from a fringe player who saw both sides of the roster bubble as a rookie to a breakout difference-maker for one of the league’s best defenses.
As Stone made his way through the locker room after a November win against Seattle, in which Stone recorded an interception for the fourth straight game, he was surrounded by a dozen reporters. A year earlier, he could have wandered around the postgame locker room with little notice.
“It’s definitely different,” Stone said. “I like being low-key, so it’s different, but I appreciate it. … It means I’m doing something good. It’s definitely surreal. I’m just embracing what’s happening but staying humble at the same time.”
Levine, for one, isn’t surprised.
“I’m so happy for ‘Chico,'” Levine said, using the nickname he bestowed upon Stone as a rookie. (He won’t divulge its origin.) “The recognition that he’s getting now, it’s well deserved. He’s worked so hard at his craft.”
Stone has always believed in himself, even when others didn’t.
Coming out of high school in football-rich western Pennsylvania, Stone failed to draw interest from Penn State or pretty much any other major college team for much of the recruiting process. He appeared to be headed to Kent State before Iowa came calling late with a Big Ten offer.
Stone ranked second in the Big Ten with four interceptions in 2018, including a pick-six against Penn State. Yet when Stone decided to enter the draft after his junior season, he once again found only lukewarm interest. Scouts weren’t sold on his size or his speed, and 218 players — including 20 safeties — came off the board before the Ravens selected Stone early in the final round.
Seventh-round picks live squarely on the roster bubble, and Stone knew it. So did Levine, who had lived in NFL bubble purgatory for the first few years of his career. Levine had gone undrafted and spent two years on the Green Bay Packers’ practice squad before joining the Ravens’ practice squad. Levine ultimately forged a 10-year NFL playing career during which he became the Ravens’ de facto special teams captain. If anyone could guide Stone through the uncertainty, it was Levine.
“I was a bubble guy myself,” Levine said. “I had people around me that helped me to develop my career, and I wanted to try to do the same thing for him.”
Stone recalled special teams coordinator Chris Horton pointing to Levine one day and telling Stone, “You want to make the team? Sit around this guy.”
So he did. Stone sat right behind Levine in special teams meetings. He asked questions. He took notes. He watched how Levine did everything.
“He taught me … how to become a pro,” Stone said.
That included some tough lessons.
Levine said one day early in training camp, Stone showed up at 6:01 for a 6 a.m. weight-room workout with Levine, Matthew Judon and others. Levine told him to leave.
“I told him if you want to be in here working out at 6 o’clock, you gotta be in here at 6 o’clock,” Levine said.
Since COVID had canceled OTAs in 2020, this was one of Stone’s first interactions with Levine and other veterans.
“He was like, ‘Get out. You’re not working out,'” Stone recalled.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I like this dude right now,'” Stone continued. “He got me mad. … We argued, and then later I sat down and talked to him, and he explained that [Eric] Weddle had started this, and if you aren’t there on time, that’s how it is. Every day from there on out, I just tried to beat him to the weight room.”
Stone made the initial 53-man roster as a rookie, but he was cut a month later, then signed to the practice squad. He played in two games and was added to the 53-man roster in November, but five weeks later, he was waived again and sitting in Levine’s apartment at 1 a.m.
“It was a numbers game at the time,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “We still liked him.”
Stone spent the final few weeks of the 2020 season with the Texans but did not appear in any games. He was released in the spring and re-signed with the Ravens.
Learning under Levine, Stone steadily developed into a reliable special teams player, but his path to significant defensive snaps appeared to be blocked. Chuck Clark was an established starter, and in the spring of 2022, the Ravens signed safety Marcus Williams to a five-year, $70 million deal, then selected Kyle Hamilton in the first round of the draft.
Williams suffered a wrist injury that sidelined him for seven games, and Hamilton struggled to get up to speed as a rookie. Stone moved into the starting lineup and got himself noticed. He finished the season with 38 tackles on defense.
Yet after the season, the Ravens declined to tender Stone as a restricted free agent, which would have cost about $2.6 million in cap space. Stone became a free agent.
Stone said he had “other situations” in free agency but called it a “no-brainer” to return to Baltimore on a one-year deal worth about $1.7 million. “I feel like I have something here built with the guys, built with the coaching staff,” he said.
Stone was again projected to be a backup behind Williams and the ascending Hamilton. But once again, an injury to Williams threw the door wide open. Stone had a career-high nine tackles and a huge goal-line interception in a Week 2 win at Cincinnati. He picked off a pass at Cleveland, and then another. And another. By early November, Stone led the league with six interceptions.
“Every time I’m tracking the ball, I think I’m playing center field,” Stone said, noting that baseball had been his favorite sport growing up. “[I’m] just going to get the ball, high-point it, wherever it is.”
Ravens secondary coach Chris Hewitt said Stone “has always been an instinctive player, a high IQ football player.”
“It’s all about the opportunity,” Hewitt added. “Every time he’s come in, he’s played well. Now, this year, the ball is finding him.”
Stone’s one-year deal means he is set to hit free agency again in the spring, but with the Ravens in a playoff chase, Stone said he isn’t occupied with such thoughts.
“I can only control what I can control at this point,” he said. “All I’ve got to do is keep playing ball. … That’s all gonna take care of itself later on. There are other guys in the same situation as me, and we’re not thinking about it. We’re trying to go win.”
Harbaugh said he looks back on rookie-year Stone and admires the hard-earned transformation.
“He was a good player then, but man … I think he’s a good example of someone that takes care of the details on a day-to-day basis, comes to work every day, does his best, doesn’t complain, doesn’t get caught up in things [like], ‘Why is this not happening for me?'”
“It’s a good lesson I think for young people,” Harbaugh added. “If they’re going to watch that [and say], ‘I want to be great at something’ or ‘I want to be a pro football player,’ watch Geno Stone and what he’s been doing.”
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox
Issue 284: December 2023 / January 2024
Originally published Dec. 13, 2024