The Raiders rounded out the fourth round of the 2025 NFL Draft on the defensive side of the ball by adding South Carolina defensive tackle Tonka Hemingway.

Read below to learn more about the newest addition to the Silver and Black's defense.

Experience in the trenches

Raiders General Manager John Spytek has repeatedly mentioned his admiration for players who love football and he seems to be getting one in Hemingway. The Conway, South Carolina, native played in all 61 games over his five collegiate seasons, tying a school record for games played. He made 28 starts and recorded 17.5 career tackles for loss with 9.5 sacks, 11 pass breakups, 19 quarterback hurries and six fumble recoveries.

As a junior in 2022, Hemingway led the Gamecocks with 4.0 sacks and ranked second on the team with eight tackles for loss.

According to NFL Media's Lance Zierlein, Hemingway is "lively out of stance and into rush, spies into pocket and times up arms to bat passes away, able to make wide sliding steps to range across gaps to tackle."

Following in his brother's footsteps

Hemingway isn't the first member of his family to reach the NFL. His brother, Junior, played wide receiver at Michigan and was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the seventh round of the 2012 NFL Draft. He played in 31 games for the Chiefs from 2012-14.

Including Junior, all three of Tonka's siblings played sports in college. One sister, Shamae, played basketball at Coker College while the other, Janecia, played softball at Francis Marion University.

As Tonka realizes his own NFL dreams, he brings a multi-sport background to the Raiders. In addition to football, he played baseball and was an All-State basketball player in high school.

Leading by example

Not only did Hemingway contribute on the field, he was also a model student-athlete off it.

"I just love the way he carries himself," Gamecocks Head Coach Shane Beamer said, per the The Athletic. "He doesn't say a whole lot. He just comes to work every single day. You don't notice him necessarily because he's not saying a whole lot, but he just plays football. Really impressed with him, does everything right, handles his business on and off the field."

At South Carolina's 2024 end-of-season awards banquet, Hemingway was selected by the coaches as a co-winner of the Community Service Award. He graduated with a degree in public health and was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll in all five years of his collegiate career.

Behind the name

You're probably wondering how Terrell Hemingway became known as "Tonka". According to his father, Kenneth, it wasn't because of his size or a love for Tonka trucks. Rather, he acted like one.

"He would always fall, jump, tear up anything he had," Kenneth Hemingway told The Athletic. "We bought him one of those little hot rod cycles from Walmart with the battery to it, and I had to always monitor him because he was a daredevil. We were going over to my mother's house and my uncle had a trailer there that was pretty high off the ground, and Tonka was going so fast that he couldn't stop that thing so he ran dead into that mobile home and the bike went under the mobile home and it knocked him back off that bike. He jumped up and got on the bike and kept going."