Injury leaves players ‘traumatized,’ brings back awful memory
CINCINNATI — In an instant, it went from a much-anticipated NFL game being played in a carnival-like atmosphere to a frightening life-and-death struggle played out in a suddenly-silenced stadium.
Buffalo Bills safety
Damar Hamlin had just tackled Cincinnati receiver Tee Higgins near midfield with 5:58 left in the first quarter Monday night at Paycor Stadium. He popped back upright from what seemed to be a routine tackle, took one step and then collapsed backwards onto the field and did not move.
The players around him realized he was in real distress and motioned for medical staff. Within seconds they were frantically waving for a stretcher to be brought out, as well.
From the anguished reactions of the Bills players — some of them melted down onto all fours, many in tears — to the numbed actions of Bengals players across the field and the intensity that showed on the medical people who worked on Hamlin, including those giving him forceful chest compressions for several minutes, it became clear to the some 65,000 people in the stadium and a huge national TV audience for this Monday Night Football game that this no longer was about a battle between AFC heavyweights to decide home-field advantage for the playoffs.
This was about saving a young player who had — according to a tweet by the Bills just before 2 a.m. — a cardiac arrest on the field.
As Hamlin lay there for an excruciating 15 minutes before he finally was loaded onto an ambulance and slowly driven off the field, his teammates knelt in a tight circle — many with their arms around each other, several openly sobbing — and prayed.
Interestingly, the ambulance idled in the underbelly of the stadium for a few minutes until, it was reported, Hamlin’s mother Nina, who had made the trip over from their McKees Rocks home in metro Pittsburgh, could be brought from the stands to ride with her 24-year-old son to the UC Medical Center.
At that time, Fox sports reported Hamlin had a pulse but was not breathing on his own.
Out on the field, Bengals coach Zac Taylor walked from his sideline toward the Bills bench and huddled with Buffalo counterpart Sean McDermott, who was in tears. Four game officials were with them.
After a couple minutes of discussion, Taylor looked toward the Bengals sideline and motioned for his play
ers to head to the dressing room. The Bills did the same.
The game was first suspended and 45 minutes later the NFL announced it was postponed. The league said Tuesday afternoon the game will not be resumed this week.
During the suspended period, Cincinnati’s team captains — quarterback
Joe Burrow, running back Joe Mixon and offensive lineman Ted Karras — went over to Buffalo’s locker room to offer support.
Late Monday night a few Bengals joined some of the Bills who skipped the team’s flight home to stay at the hospital and keep a vigil for their fallen teammate.
In a post-midnight conference call with three
NFL officials, Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice president of football operations and a former player himself, talked about the communications the league had with the head coaches as the scene unfolded and how Taylor and McDermott relayed the pulse of their players.
Vincent called it a “volatile” situation in the dressing rooms and said it was decided — as it should have been — that no one could go back out on the field and play.
He said players were “devastated” and “traumatized.”
The Bengals radio broadcast crew — who were quite respectful — and the TV talking heads, a couple who were a little less so, discussed the situation and more than once noted it had occurred on what seemed to be a benign tackle.
Hamlin had stood up and taken a step and then ... just dropped.
Awful reminder
As I watched from the press box, I was reminded of another time when sport — and a seemingly routine exchange — turned into a life-and-death struggle.
That time I was just three feet away and it’s an indelible moment that, in close to 50 years as a sportswriter, I have never forgotten.
It was 1985 at a barely-noticed, three-round super heavyweight bout between amateurs Howard Brooks and Hank Williams at the South Florida Golden Gloves Tournament in North Miami Beach.
I was a columnist for The Miami News and the only sportswriter covering the fights that night.
Brooks was my friend. A 6-foot-4 and 228 pound physical specimen, he had been a high school sports star in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and had graduated from the University of Virginia with a chemical engineering degree.
He was working for his dad’s mining company and had other good job offers, but he was fascinated by boxing and idolized Muhammad Ali.
He had decided to first try his hand in the sport he loved and had moved to Miami Beach to train at the famed Fifth Street Gym, which had been
Ali’s fistic home. He got an apartment nine blocks from the gym.
We met on one of his first days in Miami and
I’d come watch him train on occasion in the weeks after. He was happy when I came to see his fight, which was his first in Miami.
We sat together and talked in his dressing room an hour before his bout and when he crawled through the ropes to fight, I took a seat at the ring apron next to his corner.
He was leading after two rounds — Williams was out of shape and winded — and in his corner, Brooks spit his mouthpiece into his glove, looked down at me and asked how I thought he was doing. I told him he’d be fine. I was wrong.
Moments later, Williams threw a half-hearted left hook that glanced Brooks’ chin and suddenly caused him to drop to a knee.
Like Hamlin, he too popped right back up and took a step, his backward, as the ref began to give him an eight count. But when the ref hit seven, Brooks suddenly dropped to the canvas, unconscious,
He lay there and I was reaching up to him when medical personnel rushed into the ring. A lone tear rolled from his right eye.
The medics worked on him, loaded him in an ambulance and he never regained consciousness. He was taken off life support the next day and died.
Over the years, I’ve covered thousands of sporting competitions — most of them filled with the roller-coaster of emotions that come with victory and defeat — but no sports assignment ever hit me and stayed with me like that one.
But Monday night brought all that flooding back.
Utter sadness
I don’t know the prognosis for Hamlin except that he’s in UC Medical Center in critical condition and said to be intubated, which means not breathing on his own.
This frightening situation has rocked the sports world like Howard Brooks’ death never did.
Back then there was no social media. The fight wasn’t televised and there were 700 people in the stands.
Brooks’ death numbed his hometown and crushed his family but made few ripples nationally.
Monday night’s tragedy happened in prime time and quickly became the biggest news of the day.
Along with the shock everyone is feeling, there is the utter sadness. Will he survive? How is his family able to cope? How can the Bills players deal with this? And what about the city of Buffalo, which has dealt with one terrible occurrence after another in less than eight months?
In mid-May there was the 18-year-old white supremacist — wearing body armor and firing an AR-15-style weapon with a high-capacity magazine, details similar to the mass murderer who killed nine and injured 37 in just 32 seconds in the Oregon District in 2019 — who attacked a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo. He killed 10 people and wounded three.
Over Christmas there was the crushing blizzard that battered Buffalo with 52 inches of snow, subzero temperatures and high winds. As of Monday, it had claimed 39 lives.
Now comes a life-threatening injury to a beloved player, especially back home in McKees Rocks, where two years ago he started a toy drive. By late December it had raised just under $3,000.
In the two hours after his injury, it raised over $1 million. By early evening Tuesday, over $4.9 million had been collected.
That’s the only good thing that happened Monday night.
Since the injury, athletes from across the sports spectrum — and especially from the NFL — have offered support via social media.
J.J. Watt, the Arizona Cardinals All-Pro defensive end, summed it up best when he tweeted:
“The game is not important. Damar Hamlin’s life is important. Please be ok. Please.”