Always honor the bravery of men like Damar Hamlin who play in violent NFL
Before stepping onto an NFL sideline for the first time, I thought I knew a little something about football at the highest level. That came from playing seven seasons of low-level football, including a year in a small-college program, and truth is I had no idea what I was walking into.
At field level, the speed and violence of the pro game is beyond shocking. On the first Sunday the NFL played after the 9/11 attacks, I was on the sideline for the collision in the Jets-Patriots game that forever changed the sport — the Mo Lewis knockout of Drew Bledsoe that launched Tom Brady’s career. I’ll never forget the sound of that hit. Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson said it might’ve been the loudest one he’d heard, too; the shot left Bledsoe’s life in danger from internal bleeding.
A decade later, in the rain at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, I was back on the field for the fourth quarter and overtime of the NFC Championship game between the 49ers and Giants, perhaps the most vicious event I’ve ever covered. Eli Manning was nearly cut in half in the pocket, and in the immediate wake of the victory the wife of Giants offensive line coach Pat Flaherty was on the phone asking him why his unit had allowed the quarterback to get pummeled.
Even the best of the best get hit and hurt all the time in football. Players get their legs broken, their ribs fractured, their knee ligaments torn and their brains concussed. They understand the occupational hazards going in, and hope to never confront the worst of them.
But even though a Lions receiver named Chuck Hughes died during a game more than a half-century ago, players never consider death among those possibilities. And that’s what made Monday night’s scene in Cincinnati so frightening.
Damar Hamlin, Buffalo Bills safety, collapsed after tackling the Bengals’ Tee Higgins and didn’t get up. The players’ frantic calls for medical attention told the story. A 24-year-old man was in extreme peril. Hamlin was in cardiac arrest, and before his heartbeat was restored and he was taken away by ambulance, millions of fans watching along with the traumatized athletes whispered the same three words:
Please don’t die.
Thank God, Hamlin was alive in the hospital Tuesday, in critical condition, while people around the world prayed for him to pull through. In a flash, after making what appeared to be a routine tackle, a sixth-round draft pick and second-year pro had become the league’s most beloved figure.
But that’s just it — there is nothing routine about the NFL. Trust me, what seems to be relatively benign contact between a safety and a receiver from room-temperature conditions in your living room is anything but.
Remember that from this day forward. While checking your fantasy league standings, and screaming at the TV over this reckless fumble or that dropped pass, remember that these are real, vulnerable human beings who play this game.
Remember that these are brave young men, and yes, that “brave” is an appropriate adjective. The NFL isn’t actual combat, and the players aren’t actual soldiers, but the men in the arena are worthy of your admiration and respect for putting so much on the line.
Fans hear and read about football’s staggering toll on the athletes, Giants Hall of Famer Harry Carson once said, but they don’t truly understand “what the grueling nature of the sport does to our bodies. There is a price that you pay for the glory you might be looking to achieve.”
Carson suffered at least a dozen concussions during his career, and said the brain injuries inspired suicidal thoughts. He is hardly alone. Football has sentenced a lot of participants to grim post-career lives. Wesley Walker, the former star Jets receiver, once said that the constant pain and endless surgeries from his injuries left him pleading for relief in the dead of night, and wishing he had never played the game.
We’ve all seen devastating NFL injuries over the decades, from Darryl Stingley’s to Dennis Byrd’s to Kevin Everett’s to Ryan Shazier’s. But the sport is dangerous enough even at the high school level to lead to tragic results. Eight years ago, Tom Cutinella, a Long Island teenager with designs on attending West Point, lost his life to an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit.
“Tom died from football,” his father, Frank, told me during a visit to his home. Frank and Kelli Cutinella, football lovers both, didn’t appreciate it when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell later dismissed the threat the game poses by saying, “There’s risk in life. There’s risk in sitting on the couch.”
Few professionals risk more than football players do, and that’s a chief reason NFL games are the most popular shows on American TV. We are addicted to the action, the contact, the brutality of the engagement. The game is entertainment when observed from that couch Goodell was talking about, but it’s something quite different when watched from point-blank range.
Like so many others, I love football. I can’t wait to watch football, and to write about football. After my wedding and my son’s birth, a bygone high school game still probably accounts for the third happiest day of my life.
But I had no clue about pro football until I watched from the sideline. As a fan, after Monday night, be sure to always honor and respect Damar Hamlin and his fellow brave souls who play it.
