The Buffalo Bills players and coaches spoke for the first time since safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and went into cardiac arrest on Monday night during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Bills head coach Sean McDermott and quarterback Josh Allen spoke to the media in a press conference, and McDermott got very emotional when he talked about the impact Hamlin made on everyone.
“It’s amazing to know the impact that this has had on so many people,” McDermott said. “And for Damar to be awake and his mom to be able to share that with him is incredible.” When Hamlin collapsed, the medical staff performed CPR before sending him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Hamlin woke up on Thursday, and while he couldn’t talk because he was intubated, he was holding the hands of family members who were at the hospital. Hamlin also wrote a note to a nurse asking who won the game on Monday night. What Hamlin didn’t know is McDermott’s leadership was a big reason the game never continued.
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“The way he handled it, he was the perfect man in that situation to handle that,” Allen said of McDermott, per the Bills’ official website. “That type of situation. I can’t say enough about what he did, what he said to us in the locker room.” When McDermott knew that Hamlin was in a bad situation, he gave his players time to process before deciding on the game. He then told the players to head to the locker room and left it up to them to decide if they want to play.
“I think I went in and addressed the team and just felt like overall, it was going to be really hard to put them back out there,” McDermott shared, per The Sun. “But I wanted to give them the option to go back out there if they wanted to. And led by Josh (Allen) and a couple of the other captains, they decided not to go back out there.”
The Bills will now move forward and get ready for their final game of the regular season which is against the New England Patriots. “Damar’s father spoke to the team and his message was the team needed to get back to the goals it set for itself,” McDermott revealed. “Damar would’ve wanted it that way.”
