The news out of Cincinnati was good Wednesday. Buffalo Bills’ safety Damar Hamlin was still in critical condition and in intensive care but was said to be improving, less than 48 hours after maybe the scariest football scene of the last 50 years.
It wasn’t a football-specific incident; Hamlin made a routine tackle, got up, and then collapsed, went into cardiac arrest and had to have his heart restarted by medical personnel.
But it was also another reminder that when we watch this sport, more than any other and especially at its highest levels, we have to compartmentalize.
We realize the risks. We see the evidence multiple times every game day – athletic trainers running onto the field to check on a fallen player, who sometimes limps off or gingerly holds a wounded body part, or in more extreme cases has to ride off on a cart, waving as the crowd applauds.
It is a brutal, violent game, exponentially so as you go higher up the food chain. Stand on a high school sideline and it’s bruising enough. Stand on a college sideline, and the collisions are louder and more intense. On an NFL sideline? Multiply the effect by 10.
We’ve all become inured to it. The players understand the risks, and they’re trained almost from the moment they start playing football that “next man up” is not just a slogan but an ethos. If your teammate goes down, the game must still go on, so you shake off any emotions you have and play.
From a distance, we acknowledge the damage, we might wince when someone goes down, but after a commercial break the game goes on and so do we.
But this was way different. This was, literally, life or death.
The stunned, anguished, tear-stained faces of Hamlin’s teammates, and opponents, made it clear that nobody was in condition to continue that game mentally, so it was only natural that the business of the NFL went on pause.
How often does that happen where The Shield is involved? But how could it not?
The Bills-Bengals game might not be resumed, since it would probably be impossible to do so without moving the playoffs back a week. And NFL vice president Troy Vincent added an extra wrinkle Wednesday when he suggested this Sunday’s Buffalo-New England game might be postponed if the Bills weren’t ready to play.
That would be unprecedented.
Troy Vincent doesn't rule out a potentially postponement of Sunday's Patriots-Bills game, if Buffalo isn't ready to play following the events of Monday night. https://t.co/cVtsEh5KuG
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) January 4, 2023
Given the reaction and response throughout the league as players assembled for their normal Wednesday activities, it’s going to be a hard enough chore for everyone to get ready for what could be a somber Week 18. Maybe the entire league should take the week off.
It could have been worse.
Chuck Hughes, a 28-year-old wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, suffered a heart attack late in a 1971 game against Chicago. Medical personnel wheeled him off the field to work on him while the Lions and Bears finished the last 62 seconds of the game. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital an hour or so later.
Al Lucas, a 26-year-old former NFL defensive lineman who was playing for the Arena Football League’s L.A. Avengers, suffered a spinal cord injury while trying to make a tackle during a 2005 game at Staples Center, and he was pronounced dead at California Hospital.
It wasn’t a heart issue, but it was equally sudden, and teammate Lonnie Ford told the Daily News afterward, “When you’ve got a player lying on the ground, the only thing that goes through your mind is that it could be any of us out there.”
And then there was Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers’ death during a West Coast Conference tournament semifinal in 1990. Gathers, 23, dunked off an alley-oop pass, jogged back, collapsed at midcourt and was pronounced dead at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital. He had been treated for a heart condition earlier in the season but had been cleared to play.
At last look, the “Hank’s House” banner was still hanging in Gersten Pavilion. But there’s another lasting impact. His best friend, Bo Kimble, established a Philadelphia-area nonprofit more than a decade ago with the aim of raising awareness about sudden cardiac arrest. The “44 For Life Foundation,” with the 44 representing Gathers’ uniform number, encourages people to learn CPR and aims to put defibrillators in as many public places as possible.
Kimble had recorded Monday’s Bills-Bengals game on his DVR, as it turned out, but he told the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Breen a friend called him to alert him to what happened before he started watching.
“It doesn’t weaken me or sadden me. It just empowers me to go forward and go faster,” Kimble said. “What more can I do? Who do I need to bring to bear? What millionaire or billionaire friend do I need to get involved with to help me run faster and do it bigger and better? That’s what Monday did for me.”
The medical personnel who attended to Hamlin administered CPR and treated him with an AED, or automated external defibrillator, which is standard equipment now in NFL stadiums. That mandate may have helped save his life.
Meanwhile, the public has responded in massive fashion, and there’s a back story here.
The Bills Mafia supporters have made it a point in recent years to send donations to the chosen charities of opposing players, including quarterbacks Andy Dalton, Lamar Jackson and Tua Tagovailoa. Last year, Kansas City fans donated en masse to the Buffalo Children’s Hospital after the Chiefs’ playoff victory over the Bills.
This time, the whole league and its fans are on board. Hamlin’s GoFundMe page, intended to raise funds for toys for underprivileged kids in his hometown of McKees Rocks, Pa., had an original goal of $2,500. As of mid-day Wednesday it had received more than 212,000 donations and raised over $6.6 million, including high-dollar contributions from the Colts, Patriots, Texans and Commanders organizations and from Matthew Stafford, Tom Brady, Russell Wilson and Davante Adams.
So yeah, it’s a brutal game. But it’s also a brotherhood.
