In the last game of the 2022 season, a Buffalo Bill's player, Damar Hamlin, collapsed after blocking an opposing player. He stopped breathing and CPR was immediately started. CPR is never administered unless the heart has stopped beating. As the doctors from BOTH teams administered to him an ambulance was brought onto the field. I have been watching pro football my entire life and I have never seen a case where a player needed CPR . Nor have I ever seen an ambulance come onto the field. As the player was being loaded, the doctors continued to do CPR. 2 hours later, we have no word from the hospital except that Damar Hamlin is in critical condition. After only 5 minutes into the game, the game was stopped, and all players and coaching staff retired to their respective dressing rooms. The game was later cancelled because no one could think of anything except the welfare of Damar Hamlin.
It is now 4 hours after the injury and Damar Hamlin is still alive and in Intensive Care at the hospital. We have seen players injured: many broken bones, torn tendons etc. and even one broken neck, but never anything where life and death is at stake. This is something no team has ever gone through.
I think the game was just postponed, not cancelled. I, too, don't recall ever seeing an ambulance on the field at an NFL game. The report I heard was the Bengal player drove his helmet into the chest of Hamlin and the impact caused his heart to stop. Cincinnati has been known to tolerate dangerous players, but I don't know if this was a deliberate act or incidental.
I truly believe that the Cincinnati player was merely trying to make the best play he could. Every player knows that it is quite possible to escape a tackle by knocking a tackler backward. As you know, football is a violent sport and hard contacts are routine AND completely legal. In any event, the Cincinnati player did not drive his helmet into Hamlin's chest. He lowered his shoulder and hit Hamlin in the chest. I am convinced that this is a freak accident. We still do not know the full extent of the injury. The biggest concern at this point is did Hamlin suffer brain trauma due to lack of blood flow ?
The last I read, they had re-started his heart after the impact and collapse; but had him under sedation because he was not breathing on his own and they had inserted a breathing tube. I watched the collapse on Twitter, and it does look like he took a pretty heavy hit in the chest.
He did take a hit to his chest, but right after the play, he got up, took a few steps and then collapsed. If the hit was that bad, he wouldn't got up and walked at all, would he? My BIL told us that they don't have to finish the game later, since both teams are already in the Play-Offs. This was just a regular season game, not a Play-Off game. It is extremely terrible what happened, but what made it happen is not known or is known, but not revealed yet. Compared to old days of Peyton Manning, John Elway, Steve Young, today's NFL players hit very, very hard. Or, as coaches and players will say, "welcome to NFL tackle football."
Most folks here know that it's as much the timing of the hit relative to where the heart is in it's rhythm as it is the intensity of the hit. There have been instances of people dying by being hit in the chest with baseballs, RC airplanes, and the like. It's also possible that in this case, the hit jarred loose a clot.
There have always been harsh injuries in the NFL, usually head/brain injuries from years of repeated hits. I hope this young man will be OK but I don't see any intentional injury here. It's a violent sport. I'm sure the Cincinnati player is devastated by this.
Here's a short clip of the hit. Apparently Hamlin was tackling the Bengals player. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UzDW_2WLJbs
I didn't see a helmet to the chest, but the clip starts after initial contact and I cannot find any other vid of it.
There are dozens of videos on youtube, but you'll have to wade through them to find one that gives an accurate demonstration of how the Cincinnati player hit Hamlin with his shoulder and not his helmet. Search Damar Hamlin.
It is likely that it will be 48-72 hours before we know more about Mr. Hamlin's injury. ICU doctors have placed Damar Hamlin on life support and inserted a tube in his throat so machines can breathe for him. In in meantime they are cooling his body and brain which will allow the brain to recover.
Wasn't the one who had the heart attack (or whatever it was) the one who did the tackle? I don't watch football but I've seen the scene on the news, and it didn't look like a particularly violent play, and I thought the one who fell over was the one who had done the tackle, not the one who was tackled. It is a violent sport. While I was working EMS for a small city in Texas, two Varsity players died from injuries sustained during a game within a period of a few years. One of them suffered a head injury and was unconscious on the field, later dying. The other one simply suffered an extremity injury, I forget which, but died from an embolism that resulted from what was supposed to be a routine operation.
Yeh, the tackler was the one who keeled over. I did not see any chest contact in the vid Beth linked to, just the just being wrestled to the ground...but that vid was not real clear.
Yes. I find this disturbing because last year our nephew died of a "widowmaker" at age 40. He also dropped to the ground and was resuscitated at his workplace. He was put in an induced coma and on life support but died 2 days later.