This was not what drew a sellout crowd of Greater Cincinnati fans to Paycor Stadium Monday night.
This was not what the players and coaches of the Bengals and the Bills came for either.
This was the featured Monday Night — and every other day of the week, to be honest — showdown in the NFL this year. The schedule was built for it. And the season built to it.
The league’s two great young quarterbacks, Joe Burrow and Josh Allen, going mano a mano after a full week’s buildup on every sports media platform.
Biggest regular season game in Paycor history? No doubt.
And then Damar Hamlin made that form tackle on Tee Higgins, head up, no targeting, absorbing a blow with the center of his chest but not anything out of the ordinary, then jumped up, took two steps backward and fell limp to the turf.
What happened next was not anything anyone could ever prepare for, build up to, or even know how to process what they were seeing or feeling.
It simply hadn’t ever happened this way – well, ever. Right there in front of the whole stadium – and the rest of the NFL world.
I found myself looking up Damar Hamlin as we all waited through those first minutes that soon became a half-hour as the emergency personnel, doctors, trainers worked on the fallen Bill.
Looks like a wonderful kid was the first reaction to the former University of Pittsburgh defensive back from McKees Rocks and Pittsburgh Central Catholic High School, who had set up a foundation while still in college to give out toys at Christmas time to kids from his hometown, a place plagued by crime and drugs.
He worked his way through his private high school by helping with his parents’ cleaning business.
Damar Hamlin (Buffalo Bills photo)
The next thing we pulled up was an interview a week ago the second-year pro, just 24, had given to the local TV station that does the Bills games. They apologized for not talking to him sooner but now that he was starting to contribute in a big way in recent weeks for the league-leading Bills, it was time.
One quote from this personable young man sticks with me: “I’m cherishing every moment I can,” he said of his move into a key role for Buffalo. Just cherishing life as it was coming to him as another video showed him greeting his mother – who was in the stands at Paycor Monday – with a big hug and kiss on the sidelines before an earlier game.
And then after what seemed an interminable amount of time watching the coaches and players literally not knowing what to do as the medical personnel worked on Damar, play-by-play man Joe Buck said the words we were thinking but couldn’t quite believe were a reality.
They’ve been “administering CPR,” Buck said in a sentence none of us ever expected to hear. Broken bones, even spinal cord injuries, ACL and Achilles’ tears, even, but CPR?
That’s for stopped hearts. For bringing someone back to life. Could that be what we were witnessing? “Cardiac arrest,” the Bills described it later. It was indeed. No wonder the players seemed so unable to handle this the way football players usually can?
Not this time. Recent polls tell us Americans aren’t nearly as religious as they once were. And yet here they were, every player in a Bills’ uniform, kneeling, praying and holding hands.
But not just the players. The Paycor stands, full of fans in orange and black, might as well have been church pews, so quiet and respectful and reverential were Cincinnati fans at what they were witnessing.
Didn’t matter that this wasn’t a Bengal who was down. They were all in this together – players, fans, media and coaches, when the Bengals’ Zac Taylor and the Bills’ Sean McDermott – were the ones to inform the NFL that no more football was happening here on this night – or this week.
Knowing NFL Executive Vice-President Troy Vincent and his family a bit from my time living in the same town in suburban Philadelphia when he was a great high school football player before his college and NFL days, it’s hard to believe Vincent, the person responsible for the immediate call for the NFL, really wanted the players to take five minutes warmup and be ready to go.
This was not 1971, the only other time an NFL player actually did die in a game in Detroit but no one knew that for certain until Greg Hughes reached the hospital, and the game finished the last few minutes.
Damar Hamlin was still in critical condition more than 20 hours later in intensive care at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
And the world has responded. His foundation’s goal was to raise $2,500 for Christmas toys this year. Tens of thousands of donors around the nation have pushed that to more than $5 million in less than a day.
Dan Weber
Except for Fox Sports Skip Bayless, whose role has been designated contrarian on his sports debate show and who will be lucky if he escapes the axe for his insensitive tweet, not a soul seems to have worried over how the league can suspend – and maybe not have a way to play – such an important game.
As Cincinnati made loud and clear with its serious, deeply near-religious response, the outcome of the game, any game, was not remotely important Monday night.
Damar Hamlin was. And always will be.
On a night when the cheering stopped and the praying started.
Dan Weber is a sports reporter for the NKyTribune.
