The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Damar Hamlin's on-field cardiac arrest

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Mitchell Schwartz and The Athletic's Tim Graham join Robert Mays to discuss the horrific scene in Cincinnati on Monday following Damar Hamlin's on-field cardiac arrest. Tim offers his perspective having been on the scene in Cincinnati over the last few days, while Mitch provides a player's point of view.Damar Hamlin's foundation GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/mxksc-the-chasing-ms-foundation-community-toy-drive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Obviously, it's been an unprecedented day in the NFL world and what happened with tomorrow Hamlin during last night's Bill's Bengals game. I know most of you probably watched it, and most of you have probably tried to process it over the last day or so, and we've done the same. We're going to do a show today, not because I feel like we need to serve content to

anyone. That's not what we're trying to do here. I feel like our job is to contextualize and provide perspective on what goes on in the NFL. And that includes what happened last night. So we're going to try to do our best. A little bit later, Mitchell Schwartz, who is a friend of the show and has done a great job of giving us the player perspective on things in the past, is going to come on and try to do the same for this situation. I really appreciate Mitch sharing his time and his insight with us.

But before we do that, we're going to talk to Tim Graham from The Athletic, one of our senior writers who covers Buffalo sports. And was at the game last night, has been reporting on this from Cincinnati over the course of the day. Just to give us some updates on what the latest is with Tamar Hamlin and his situation, what it was like to be there, and just everything that has gone down over the last day or so. So that's what we're going to try to do today. And I appreciate you guys spending the time with us. So let's get to it. We're joined now by Tim Graham, who's a senior writer at the athletic and has covered sports in the Buffalo area for a very long time.

He was at the game last night and has spent the day in Cincinnati. reporting more on the story. Tim, thank you very much for the time today. I really appreciate it. Happy to do it. It's an important story, and I'm honored to be able to tell it as difficult as it's been. Just give me an update about the latest information that you have and what you know. We're recording us at 5.18 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday. I wanted to kind of give you the day to spend it reporting and to gather some info. So what do you know right now about this, DeMarne Hamlin's condition? just the latest with everything that's happening. I can't say anything more than has been announced,

and I have been reaching out to several sources, and I've cultivated some more since I've been in Cincinnati. But on a subject like this, it's very difficult to talk about what you're hearing because the subject matter is so delicate and personal that you don't want to be wrong, like I said, I'm dealing with sources that I've cultivated here in Cincinnati that I don't have a long history with. And so that's not to say they can't be trusted.

I do believe that the information that I'm getting is genuine. But I just hesitate to say the little things, the dribs and the drabs of the minute-by-minute update. because things change and it's volatile and turbulent. And so I really can only say what the team and the NFL and the Hamlin family have said so far is that he is still in intensive care as we're recording this. And he is in critical condition. And I think that, you know, it's still not even, I think. It's a grave situation.

How did you spend the day? Where were you? Who were you talking to? What's the scene there? Well, I've been camped out close to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center where Damar Hamlin was taken from Paycor Stadium last night by ambulance and where he has been since. I've been just kind of on alert and mostly on the phone a lot. I have stayed away from the medical center itself because, and from what I understand from fellow members of the media,

there have been some fans that have gathered there today. Unlike last night, however, I'm being told that maybe there's a performative nature, maybe to some of the people who are showing up looking to be interviewed, looking to be on camera as opposed to an organic show of grief and confusion and sorrow that Bill's and Bengals fans were showing last night. And that's something that I try to stay away from. And so, and for obvious reasons.

Yeah. You know, so I've been at a coffee shop, a couple of blocks away and, you know, kind of, you know, talking to people as best I can to get an idea as to what can be expected. And, you know, the spokesperson for the UC Medical Center has said that she does not plan to have any kind of debriefing today from the medical center standpoint. And so it's been really a very slow day from that standpoint. And I think that that's probably what UC Medical Center would prefer to do is to step back, let the Buffalo Bills, the National Football League, and the Hamlin family take the lead on this, and to release the information as they're comfortable, as opposed to, you know, being the ones out front and dealing with the media.

I'd go back to last night for a minute. Obviously, we're watching on TV. You're there in the moments right after it happens, and you see kind of the scramble begin. What did you know? What did you see? How did you guys kind of process what was going on in real time? Well, I was sitting next to Bill's Beat reporter Joe Biscalia,

and we share his binoculars. And I did not see DeMar Hamlin go down. because it was such a routine play. I had looked back to my notes doing my play by play, or I was taking a look at the updated statistics on my computer. And generally what happens when somebody is down hurt, you overhear somebody in the press box say, so-and-so's down, or bills players down.

And so you look up and you generally will make note of who it is. who the backup would be. How serious is it? Just to gauge kind of a loose idea. You know, we had just seen earlier in the game, Dane Jackson, who suffered a head injury. And Bill's players had taken a knee for that because that's a very serious and unfortunately,

very commonplace scene in the NFL when a player goes down with a head injury. and everybody is cautious and he had to come off and was being evaluated at that time. And so my first thought is, oh, geez, the bills can't afford to lose DeMar Hamlin, another defensive back. But then I noticed something that I don't usually see. And this is as somebody who's been doing this for, I don't know, 35 years, 30 years. I'm former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. I lived in Las Vegas.

I've covered a lot of fights. I've covered fights in which. a participant was taken out of the ring on a stretcher and later died in the hospital. But I had never seen this. And the thing that I first noticed was the oxygen tank and the long tube that was being led down into what was now a sea of people, a crock and not a sea yet, not yet. It was medical professionals who were very urgent barking out orders. I didn't see panic, but this was clearly serious based on the fact that they were yelling for the stretch. right away. It's rare that you see oxygen like that being administered so quickly. Then I noticed

the face mask had been unscrewed and the helmet removed, which is also generally pretty serious. But also, that's not, that part in and of itself is not unusual. We could sense that the ambulance was coming because you could see the people clearing away from the tunnel. So you knew that this was more than just the stretcher. The ambulance was probably about to come out. So I was looking at the tunnel. And then in that time of looking in the tunnel to see if the ambulance was going to come out and then be refocusing on the medical staff that was working on Demar Hamlin, I noticed the CPR being performed. And that's when I thought, you know, we've been talking for years, mostly when it comes to head injuries, we're wondering if there will come a day when we see a player die on the

field. And to see CPR performed, I had never seen it in all my years of covering boxing, of debilitating catastrophic injuries that are suffered, of all my years covering the National Football League, of all my years covering the National Hockey League, a brutal sport in and of itself, in which I helped cover Richard Zednik when his throat was slashed by a skate in Buffalo, the Florida Panthers forward who almost bled out or could have bled out on the ice in Buffalo. And I had never seen CPR being performed on a player. I, hell, I don't know if I've seen CPR performed on anyone. And that is when it really struck me that this is unprecedented.

And this is awful. And that is when I got up for my seat in the press box and got in the elevator and went down to the locker room area to try to learn as much as I could. And from that moment on, you could see Bill's personnel. And I'm struck by how, I don't want to say they were calm. There was clearly an urgency, but there was no panic. And I'm talking about their COO, Ron Rukuya, general manager. Brandon Bean, members of the front office who were down there trying to organize and get things, you know, just trying to get information, relay information, trying to learn. It was obviously very

much in the moment. The ambulance was still on the field. Demar Hamlin hadn't even been put in it yet, but I think I was struck by the sense of order. And I think that that probably speaks to the NFL and the way they drill, situations, even situations they've never encountered. I know that they do, whether it be for a medical emergency or, let's even say, an act of terrorism. There's all kinds of things that they will go through almost a role-playing endeavor to prep for catastrophe. And just to see everybody relying on their training and their intellect and their instincts was really impressive to me. and it gave me a sense of calm that, oh, maybe he's not that. Maybe I was wrong.

Maybe everything is okay. But then once the players started coming off the field, well, the ambulance left. And then the players all came off the field. And it was amazing. So you're talking 50 players. I don't know how many players that the bills had here who maybe weren't in uniform, whether they'd be injured or practice squad guys, all the coaches, all of the equipment guys. the team came off the field, as you saw, as you were watching on ESPN, and almost not a word spoken, just the silence, the walking with, with, with conviction or with, you know, they were just headed straight to the locker room, not in, and not any kind of, hey, let's keep it focused boys, or hey, let's, you know, come on, let's, you know, nothing.

The normal chatter you would hear in those moments. Borderline stone silence with the occasional, because they could see the ambulance was still not, well, it had not left yet. There was the occasional, occasionally somebody would say they haven't left yet. And that was the extent of it. They all disappeared in the locker room and eventually two people, one believed to be DeMar Hamlin's mother, a man and a woman in Debar Hamlin jerseys had finally been located. They were brought to the ambulance. The ambulance left with the sirens blaring and with a police escort. Do you know anything either from what you gathered last night or what you've talked about today,

about the decision for them to leave the field and for them to postpone the game? No, I don't. And I think that that's information that is out there that a lot of people want to know. because ESPN and Joe Buck had spoken about the five minutes being given for players to loosen up, get ready to go back into the game. I was the one who asked Troy Vincent that question on the conference call last night, around midnight, what went into that moment. And he said it was insensitive and ridiculous, I believe, were the words he used,

that the NFL never considered continuing the game. ESPN, of course, today has said they were going based on information that they were receiving from the league and from officials in the moment. The players clearly thought that the game was going to resume. Joe Burrough started warming up. The bill's defense, much of it was on the field, ready to keep going. So it was relayed to the people that this game was. going to, was going to continue by someone.

And so I think that, I don't know if this is a CYA moment by the NFL or what, but I, maybe it was, I'm not sure. So, but I do think that it is maybe not interesting in the, or important in the grand scheme of things, given that a man's life is in the balance and the eventual right decision was made. But I think it does speak about the, uh, the show must go on, of the NFL, which has gone ahead after catastrophic injuries in the past, of just, you know, a mindset that maybe needs to be reexamined in our society of what is important. And maybe this is the type of moment that changes and spins things in a different way moving forward when catastrophes happen. I was just watching on television.

I only know from the body language that I saw and what it felt like in that moment. Obviously, Sean McDermott is just, there's a thousand yards there. I can't imagine what it was like to be him in that moment, watch one of your guys go through that and to see your team respond that way. But it sure did seem like Zach Taylor walked across that field and communicated something that made both parties believe that it was okay for them to pause things and for them to leave the field. And I would like to know.

not because I feel I'm owed the information or that we as the public does have to know every colonel or every little thing that that has been done in this game. You know, there are privacy. You know, there is a, there's a privacy to it. You know, there's a man's life is at stake. Do we deserve to know every little thing? No. But I would like to know what was said there to give these guys credit.

Let's find out who actually did finally have the clearer head. Let's give, let's give praise. let's throw bouquets at the feet of the people who did finally have a clarity and say, let's not do this. And maybe Shaw McDermott, because he is obviously shaken up, maybe he needed somebody who was at least a little detached, who didn't know DeMar Hamlin so intimately to come over and say, you know, it's okay if we don't continue with this game. You know, I would like to know the humanity of this decision. And so that's why I would like to know what Zach Taylor had to say.

because it was probably rather profound. And Zach Taylor, based on ESPN's reporting, showed up at the hospital last night to check on Demar Hamlin. So, you know, there's a brotherhood here. And I also did see, by the way, shortly after about 20 minutes after the ambulance left, the Bengals captains still in uniform, still wearing their pads, walked from their locker room down to the Bill's locker room to give their regards to the men, you know, on the other side, even that they had.

hugged each other right there on the field, but in the moment after they'd come off the field, those Bengals players, the leadership on that team made it a point to go down to the Bill's locker room and check on them. And so those are those are the things that I take away from last night is that, you know, there are more important things than sports. And I've, it's just the perspective of whether it be your fantasy team or that's the first the first Bengals game that you can bet in the state of Ohio. A lot of people are all in a lather over that. And you know what?

It doesn't necessarily matter that, you know, these are guys out there performing. Yes, they're getting paid a lot of money. But guys like DeMar Ham one or not, a sixth round pick. He's in his second year. He's 24 years old, may never play the game again. And it's not as though his family's set for life. So it's not just that these gladiators know what they're signing up for and this belief that they are going to walk away from this game with all kinds of money,

sports cars, and go golfing six times a week. That's usually not how it goes. And, you know, I think that last night was a slap back to reality for a lot of people who do get wrapped up in the wonderland of sports. For somebody who's been around that team and for somebody who's worked on this for the last day or so, what can you tell us about Debar Hamelin? He is 24 years old. He is for McKee's Rocks, Pennsylvania. He is a sixth round, second round player that went to Pitt. I mean, just that humanity and kind of explaining that a little bit more. What have you gathered from both who he is

and kind of how people around that team feel about him? You know, I spoke to him a handful of times. this season because of his increased role. I can't say that I was able to really get to know him that well as to where I can speak to him from my own personal perspective. But I do know, and this is prior to last night, it's not as though I'm hearing these things because people are speaking a lot about him and I'm learning. He was known as one of the glue guys in the locker room, One of the, as I mentioned, a sixth round pick who is in the starting lineup.

Those are the types of players that coaches love because they earn it. They work hard at it. They stay with it. They do all the things that you want your other players to model themselves after, even the great ones, you know, to learn the humility aspect of it. One of the things that struck me about Demar Hamlin is that he is in the third year. of an annual toy drive that he does around the holidays. And the reason I make it a point to say it's the third year that he's done this is because it's only his second year in the NFL,

which means that he was doing this before he was an NFL player. This wasn't the thing where you sign an agent or sign up with an agent, and the agent advises you, okay, now you need to get a foundation for you to do some fundraising and community service. so you can have, you know, no, he was doing that already, clearly not, nothing guaranteed for him in the NFL again. I keep saying sixth round pick, but I think that that matters because it shows you what it means

that, you know, this, that what he's, how far he's come. And so he's, he was a nice, just, and the first time I interviewed him this season was after his close friend, his boyhood friend who he played at pit with, Dane Jackson was taken off the field in an ambulance because of a neck injury against Tennessee Titans. And how shook up he was to see his friend have to go through that and how worried he was. But by that time, they knew that he was going to be okay and he'd gotten the thumbs up and all that type of thing. But to see the roles reversed, I mean, how often do you see,

an ambulance on a field in an NFL game. You do see it. You might see it once every couple years, though. And here are best friends who've each been taken off the field in an ambulance this year, both playing for the Buffalo Bills in the defensive backfield after playing at Pitt together and growing up together. So it's been one of those moments that just makes you reevaluate, makes you reevaluate everything in terms of your loved ones. And as far as I'm concerned, what I do for a living, I'm sure there are people in that locker room who are reevaluating or having discussions with their loved ones about playing. Because it's, it's been bad enough that you talk about head injuries and memory loss

and the mood swings and painkiller addictions and all the different things that we're we have been talking about rightfully so and probably not enough because as much as we have increased awareness on those things in the NFL in recent years, I still think it's not enough because these guys do put their bodies and lives on the line. Here's a totally different reason that somebody's life is in the balance that football players hadn't thought of really in the past, you know, a heart attack on the field, you know, that this is believed to be from from contact. This isn't because, you know, this isn't a Hank Gathers situation or where there was a birth defect

or a genetic defect. This is something that can happen in a football game. It does happen in sports on occasion. It's rare. But this is a whole new thing for football players and their parents and their wives and their girlfriends and their children to reconcile when it comes to. playing the game. I guess the last thing I'd ask you is what comes next?

What questions are you going to have here over the next day or so? And what do you think of the things that people should be thinking about as things move forward? A difficult and significant trauma has been experienced by Damar Hamlin's teammates. I think from a football standpoint, how do they come back from that. How do you expect them to? We're recording this on Tuesday evening. The bills are scheduled to play the New England Patriots Sunday at 1 p.m. The NFL said there has been no schedule changes for week 18. The Patriots have to have the game to get into the playoffs. And I'm speaking not because I find this important. I think that people are going to be talking about

this. So I could care less if the NFL decides not to play another game this season. And the idea that games are going to be played again is difficult for me to process right now on a personal level, but also on a practical level. The bills are going to have to practice. Did they go into the game on Sunday, having gone through a what, a walkthrough on Friday and Saturday? How are these guys going to put the pads on and try to get ready to play the New England Patriots? the emotional toll that this has taken on on them and other players probably around the league. It's just that's, I'm, I'm, I just, I'm confused as to what can happen next and when, when can it? When is it going to be okay to play football again?

Because the games are going to be played. I think there are a lot, there are some people, cynics, who are somewhat surprised. that the NFL didn't finish the game last night because, and we talked about the five-minute aspect of it where the announcement was made, but the NFL generally does, not even generally. I mean, how often have they ever paused a game like this? We've seen players get paralyzed, quadriplegics, and the game continues.

You get them off the field, yes, it's with heavy hearts, but they finish the game. So it's just mind-boggling to me that this, This is a business. It's an enterprise that needs to continue, or at least within its own atmosphere. It's going to insist upon itself. It's going to insist the Super Bowl has a fixed date.

Can they move the Super Bowl? Probably not. So it's just going to be amazing to me to see the gymnastics that have to happen between now and the Super Bowl of rationalizing. that this sport, this sport continue, despite the trauma that it has just gone through. I'm sure we'll have some clarity about that in the coming days and what's going to happen next. And I think that obviously the most important thing that we're going to learn over the next few days, over the next week, whenever it ends up happening is what is going on with DeMar Hamelin and what his outlook is.

And that is the most important thing. And I appreciate you providing us some perspective, giving us some insight on what it was like to be there last night. I'm sure it's been a difficult day and the time means a lot. So thank you. No, thanks for having me on to come on and talk about these things. I think they're important. And it's, it helps me process it because, you know, I'm sitting in a coffee shop by myself, Trent Rosecrans. The Reds writer came, came by just to give me somebody to sit with for a little bit, which was very nice of him to do. And I was able to talk to another journalist. You know, he was telling me about seeing a Roldus Chapman take a line drive off his forehead

and thinking that he had witnessed a player die right in front of him during spring training a few years back. And we were just processing it, but also we have a job to do and stories to tell. We are storytellers, whether it be uplifting or you know, whatever perspective we can give people to give them some insight and something to think about that changes their lives,

hopefully for the better to process. I don't know, but this is all we're trying to do. I think that's all we're trying to do here. This is helping me try to figure it out too. And I don't know if I will, but I'm a little closer than I was 20 minutes ago.

I appreciate that. And I appreciate you taking the time. We'll talk to you soon, Tim. Thank you very, very much and get home safe. Take care. All right, joining us now, long time NFL offensive tackle NFL veteran Mitchell Schwartz. Mitch, how you doing, man? I'm doing okay. How you doing?

I'm doing okay. It's been a strange day, obviously. It's been a long day. And I definitely wanted to bring you on just to give people some perspective from someone who has been on those fields before, who has been in those locker rooms before, and someone who has lived, you know, the NFL life for a very long time. I want to go back to some of those initial moments from last night. and just talk about your response to what was happening when you first saw it. I assume that you were watching the game. And pretty quickly, it seemed apparent to me that something different was happening than some of the on-field injuries that we've experienced in the past.

So just walk me through what you were thinking as you started to see everything unfold. And the first seconds after it happened, I didn't see him get up and him fall down. I just saw a guy on the ground. And in that posture, you know, you kind of look and see, I mean, it sounds gruesome. but like you look to see that his legs are like normal there isn't something crazy broken didn't see that you know i saw his lower body moving so you know in terms of the concussion and is a guy you know in like the two of the fencing position i didn't see any of that so you kind of go through that checklist of what you're used to seeing and you didn't see those things and i saw his legs moving something and okay good

you know not paralyzed and then to your point you see people calling medical attention over really quickly. The trainers are usually the first ones out there because they're right there on the sidelines. They're watching every single thing. The second guy goes down. They see it. They run out there. And then even after that, they're calling over guys for more help. And it's kind of at that point, the things started to shift. And you realize, you know, this is more severe. Again, you don't necessarily know what's going on. You know, by all appearances, it seemed like a concussion stuff we've seen before. And those first couple minutes, you know, shifted quickly. And then obviously once they started to get serious medical attention out there in ambulance. They started to get the frivolators and CPR. You know,

that's when things took a much, much, much more serious turn. And we saw players react in a way I've never seen before. You know, I've been in not a similar situation. I've had a teammate who got thrown up in the air 10 feet, fell, hit the ground, went into that serious locked up fencing position. The scariest thing I've ever seen in person. And, you know, I think he was unconscious for a little bit and they were able to get him back. And at that point, you're just a bit relieved. And you know, they get walked off or they get, you know, put off on the ambulance and things kind of go back to normal because, again, it's just an injury. He's okay enough that they can take him off the field. We're not too worried about it and we trust that everything's going to be okay. But yeah, within three or four minutes, you could tell by the player's reactions and what was going on on the field that this wasn't okay. This wasn't normal. I think that was the biggest thing for all of us that walked a lot of football is seeing that reaction and how different it was from really any other injury we've seen. Yeah, the urgency with which the medical professionals were running out there, I think that felt different. And then the reaction is like still just, even thinking about it, it's hard not to get emotional.

Think about Trey White's face when he was crying. And then just kind of the stare that Josh Allen had. And those are the two, I think, images that will stick with me from that moment. And that's when it started to feel a little bit different. And then when you hear the word CPR, the phrase CPR, I think that kind of changed everything about it. Joe Buck saying that during the broadcast and that kind of trickled out on Twitter. And it was pretty apparent pretty quickly that this was going to be something different than what we'd experienced in the past.

And this is going to be talked about a lot and has been talked about a lot already, is during the broadcast, Joe Buck saying they've been told the league has said, and we were hearing that they have five minutes to warm up and restart the game. He said it, I think, four different times. It was said over multiple broadcasts. ESPN put out a statement today saying that, I guess they stand by the reporting. That's what they were being told by the league in that moment.

And John Perry, who works for ESPN, that's what the league was communicating to him, apparently. And if that's the case that the league was telling them that they had five minutes to warm up and then they would resume the game, it's a staggering display of hubris and callousness by the NFL, but it's not surprising. Think about some of the stuff that we've seen in the past. Earlier this year, on a Monday night football game, Dane Jackson got taken off on an ambulance. on the bills. He's DeMarth Hamlin's college teammate, his pro teammate, his friend. Earlier this year on the same field that this just happened, Tua got taken off on a stretcher and went to the same hospital that DeMar Hamman went to. And the game keeps going because that's

typically what happens. The game keeps going. The NFL just powers through everything. And that's why it was really striking last night to see Zach Taylor walk across the field and for that moment to kind of overtake everything. Is him doing that and essentially saying, we don't have to do this. And I don't know if that's the case. I don't know what those conversations looked like or sounded like on the field. I don't know if we'll ever know. But when I was watching last night, that's what it felt like to me, that everyone kind of snapped back into the mode that just by almost survival instinct you snap back into. And he walked over and said something and they decided that they were going to go back to the locker room.

Yeah. I guess I have a different read on it. I don't see that as callous or whatever else. and you explained it. We see situations where guys get hurt. The ambulance has come on the field. There's serious medical attention given. And then every other time that's ever happened, you resume the game. This is a different scenario. And again, I'm sure the NFL has better info than we had when we were watching the game.

And they were a little more clued into the medical attention. And maybe they should have known that this was drastically different. And the players reacting different than normal. But again, this is just the way it's always been. the ambulance goes off. You give the guys a few minutes to gather themselves one and to kind of re-warm up two and you get back to football. And, you know, I don't think they started a stopwatch and said five minutes counting down 459, 458, but like, you know, generally a five-minute time period. And I'm not an NFL defender. I'm not someone who's like looking out for their backs and

all that stuff. I think people who have listened to me before know that. So it's not me like blindly following the NFL and pledging allegiance. I just, In this case, like, I get that they could have done it differently, but based on everything else that's ever happened on a football field, like, that's just usually what happens. So I understand that mentality to just kind of say, hey, guys, we're going to restart the game in a few minutes. And to your point, I also understand it seemed like Zach Taylor was the one that went over and told Sean McDermott, like, hey, you guys take as long as you want. Like, we're not going to start the game until everybody's ready. And, you know, there was the visual of Stefan Diggs, like bawling his eyes out. and then a few minutes later, you know, like rallying the troops because I'm sure they were told, too, hey, we've got a few minutes and we're going to start going.

And again, they've only been through football in the sense of guys get hurt. They get taken off the field and we got to find a way to keep playing. And so that's what we saw from Diggs. Like he was trying to get his guys going from all appearances. I don't know if that's actually the case. And then an hour later, he's taking an Uber to see his guy in the hospital because, you know, he goes through like crying devastated to trying to motivate his guys because that's what they're used to. And then, hey, I got to see him because this is awful. And I'm not leaving here until I can see my guy.

So you run through that whole gamut of emotions. And I just, I don't think that that specific like, hey, five minutes to keep playing thing is as bad as some other people are making out to be. Because this literally is an unprecedented situation. Like we've never seen anything like this. So to say that like everyone should have known in the moment that this is way different and we need to treat this different. You know, I think that's us just not liking the NFL. liking to put every little thing on them. I do think that it was encouraging to see kind of the humanity shine through and show us

where that line should be, whether it was Zach Taylor, whether it was some of the players. And that part of it, not always recognizing that humanity, that doesn't feel cold or heartless to me. You know, framing it that way because when we talk about names on a roster or your fantasy football score, I think it's sometimes tough to recognize the humanity in all of this. You don't have to have a lack of empathy or cruelty to forget that every once in a while. But last night it shined through in so many different ways. Zach Taylor, the player's reactions.

And then the moment that really hit me is when they said on the broadcast that his mom was there. And I was just sort of crying at home because that's when it really snaps into place that this is a son. He's a brother. The guys in that locker room, I'm sure he feels like family to them. And I'm sure you can speak to that. I mean, this is the sort of thing where the relationships you have with the guys on that team in that building is just going to be different. And I feel like we saw that with the reactions that happened on the field last night. And it was both teams too.

Like it wasn't just the Bills guys that were close to him. It was Sincet who was there. And I think to me the thing that stuck out in terms of the humanity is that even in that situation when you had people that were crying, that were in shock, that couldn't watch, that couldn't stop staring. like they seem to protect him. They seem to form that wall around him and kind of not let people in and try to block the view and at least give him some privacy, which is pretty nuts to be in a situation where, you know, you don't even know how you're reacting, but you still kind of have the wherewithal to try to protect your guy.

So I think that's another great kind of idea of the humanity and these guys caring for each other. And, you know, even on a specific team, if you're, you know, an offense alignment and maybe you don't have too much interaction with the backup safety. who's now playing, you know, there's still kind of the shared being together throughout the season, the shared trauma and everything else. And so there's that element that you feel close to him. And then you're seeing the guys who are close. Like you're seeing, like you said, white and you're seeing digs and you're seeing guys who maybe hang out with the guy more often. They're in the same position group. You're seeing their reaction. And so even if you're not quite as close to the guy individually,

like you're realizing the impact is having on your other guys. And so that, That brings a whole other level to the sadness and to, you know, how you're reacting in the moment. And again, you see, we saw every level of emotion. Like, you saw guys going to comfort teammates. You saw guys, you know, needing to go take their own space. You saw guys from Sincere going over, you know, we saw Burrow and Allen embrace. And out of all the bad things that have happened and that will happen in football, like, again, like you said, that was a good moment to realize how special the bond is and how much, you know, guys actually care for each other. in a situation like this and just in general.

Talking before about just the idea that the game goes on typically and you kind of have to just move through it, how does that compartmentalization even happen? Like how is that possible for somebody who has had to do that in the past? Well, you kind of just have to. Like it sounds dumb, but again, usually that's the protocol. Like the guy goes off the field and football starts in a few minutes and you just have to. You know, there are some games where you don't feel like playing.

There are some games where, you know, emotionally you're just in a different spot or maybe things are going on at home and, you know, you're not all the way ready, but you go on the field and you have to play. And, you know, whether you bounce back from that and whether you kind of work yourself into that mindset or whether you kind of go through a game absent minded, like you just are kind of forced to. So, you know, for me, it's kind of just being forced to go back out there. And then after a few plays, you kind of get back into the flow. And, you know, the first player two are very awkward and very weird and you're not quite sure, you know, do I give the same intensity? Are we going to kind of treat this more like a preseason game? Is it, you know, going to be a little bit different? And then again,

you kind of just get back into the flow of the game. And, you know, some guys, again, I point out Diggs again, like we saw, like his reaction was to try to fire people up, like give a speech, try to get kind of that normal pregame, you know, speech that we see and those emotions up. So some guys do it that way. Some guys pray. Some guys, you know, go into their own world and they try to find the energy themselves. We see it in sort of all types of ways. And again, the thing that made this so different compared to all the others is that most of the others, like, even in, you know, a severe fencing situation or a concussion situation, like the guy's still awake. He gives a thumbs up. There's some sort of indicator that, like, things will be okay, should be okay. Like, there might be

some issue down the road. But, like, for the most part, it's okay. It's a normal-ish thing. And of course, now we're normalizing, like, guys going into fencing postures with concussions. But, like, you get some sort of that indicator that, like, everything will be all right. And that's why guys give the thumbs up. Like, they want everyone else to know, like, hey, man, it's okay. Like, this is awful, but I'm going to be okay. And the situation that doesn't happen. Like, the guy isn't able to do that.

And so I think in the aftermath and then guys going to the locker room and the decision whether to play or not, like, that, I think Booger was the one to say it. I mean, the ESPN cut to the booth pretty quickly, and he was right on it. Like, you can't go back out there if you don't have assurance that the guy's all right. Like that's part of processing that moment is that normally you have that moment that like, oh, few, he gave the thumbs up. Like he's awake. He's talking. He can move his feet.

He can move his arms. In this case, you don't have any of that. And so you don't quite have that opportunity to have the moment of, okay, I can sigh. I can, you know, kind of let my breath out and give some relief. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously not on the same level or to the same extent. But when I was in high school, my senior year, one of my best friends, one of the other football captains was one of my lifelong friends landed on his neck and had to get taken off in a stretcher.

And this is 2006, like it's a high school game. We have no idea. I mean, I have no idea if he can feel his legs. I have no idea if he's going to be able to walk. And we were just sitting there on the sideline crying. And like, we have no idea how we're going to play. and we did. I still don't remember how or what that actually was like in the moment,

but I went back there last night because it was kind of that similar feeling of I had no idea what the final outcome was going to be and we still had to play a football game. And you're saying that, you know, at a certain level, the concussions that we've seen and some of those major injuries that we've seen, they're almost normal compared to this. And so that's what I wanted to ask you, something that I wanted to ask you. It's a difficult thing to untangle, but you're someone that not only, only has played in the NFL, but is a fan of the NFL and a fan of football, which isn't always

the case with players. And so I wanted to ask you, how should we or how do you square the violence of the game with our enjoyment of it? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And I think we all thought that if football was going to come to some head and there was going to be a tragic incident, it would be, you know, a hit to the head. it would be a guy getting blindsided. It would be, you know, one of the calls that is now illegal that we used to celebrate that we want to eliminate from football.

You know, we didn't think it would be what looked like a normal tackle. And there was nothing about that play that screamed he got hit too hard or he got hit in the head or, you know, any of the things I think we associate with the violence of football. Like if this play is the example of football being too violent, then the sport has to end because that's just a normal tackle. So I think it's difficult to kind of square the idea that this is the worst thing we've ever seen on the field with this also happened on as normal of a play as we've seen on the field. And that's kind of the hard part. And, you know, I know guys are talking about, you know, Van Pelt and Ryan Clark did a really good job after the game. I already mentioned Bougar. Like the stuff you're willing to sacrifice to play football and what it means to you.

And I don't know that guys actually say like I'd be willing to die to play football. I don't think that that's something that you think about. I don't think that's something you consider. I don't think that that's something that goes through, you know, the paradigm of what am I willing to sacrifice to play this game and to have the fun I do and to make the money I do. You know, again, we don't really see that happen. Like if there are these tragedies, like you said, it's at the high school level where there aren't proper, there's a proper medical attention or, you know, guys aren't fully grown and workout programs and their bodies just aren't ready to deal with that kind of. punishment. It happens in college where we see these just fucking psycho strength coaches who push guys past their limit when they shouldn't. But we don't see this in the NFL. We don't see this on normal

tackles. And I do think this maybe changes the equation a little bit for for people to say like, huh, like this, I guess, is an outcome that could happen. The flip side is, I mean, we've never seen a cardiac situation like this before. So I do think a lot of people just generally have the mindset that like, I'm fine. It won't happen to me. Everything will be okay. And so there will be some guys to start questioning things a little bit. You know, we've seen quote unquote early retirements. I don't like to say guys retire early after, you know, six, seven, eight years. But we've seen guys starting to step away a little bit earlier than normal. And now if you're starting to see these other worst case scenarios and you're realizing like, I guess that could happen to me if, you know,

something this terrible can happen on such a normal play, maybe I do have to start reconsidering things. But, I mean, in the immediate future, you know, you think about what happens. I just think it's so difficult for these two teams how to navigate the next week or two and, you know, how they even get on a practice field, let alone a regular field to play a game. That's going to be interesting, you know, for the other 30 teams. Everyone was watching. Everyone's heard about it. You're probably having team meetings.

You're talking about the situation. You're offering counseling and therapy and all that stuff. But, you know, your schedule. What do you think those conversations are like? today. If you're in a locker room and you're in your offensive line meeting room, what do you think that conversation is like? So it's different if you're in an official meeting space or if you're not, like the head coach is going to have a meeting. He's going to say, I know we all saw this. Like I want to talk

you guys through it. You know, it's really scary. Here's our psychiatrist. Here's our therapist. We've got other numbers for you. If you need any help, like coach's doors are open. Anyone in this building their doors open, like talk to each other. You know, then you go You think that's normal? Do you think that that's normal practice in most of the buildings? Yeah, I would imagine. So I would imagine every single team is having a team meeting and is talking about what happened and how they can be supportive of it. I think the thing that maybe isn't as normal, or I mean, I don't know, there's, you know, 30 other teams that are dealing with this, but I would imagine that the head coaches talk to the leadership group and they kind of say, like, hey, how do you guys want

to proceed the next couple days? Like, what do you guys need to kind of keep pushing through to keep going. Do you need to take a day or two and just kind of like we'll take a couple days off and we'll gather back on Thursday type of thing? I would imagine there's a lot of those conversations happening between coaching staffs and leadership groups and just trying to figure out the best way forward because, you know, this is something that affected everybody. I mean, we saw on Twitter we see, you know, I was texting guys and you just reach out to your friends around the league and you're just like, holy shit, did you see this? Like what's going on? I can't believe this. And And those are the conversations you had all last night on the phone.

If you're in the building today, you know, you're in the locker room for 20, 30 minutes before the meeting starts. Like everyone's talking about it. So I think there's, you know, a lot of kind of those informal meetings and just the kind of gatherings of guys in the locker room and in other meeting spaces. And then I can guarantee every team is going to have a team meeting where the head coach addresses it and says, hey, we've got resources for you. And if you need to, you know, talk to people.

If you need to, you know, do what you need to, like, we'll help you out. and we want everyone to kind of navigate this in the best way forward. It's just whether, you know, teams kind of have that next step of, hey, I'm going to let you guys decide what this week looks like, you know, what we need to do practice-wise, schedule-wise, to adjust it to make you guys as comfortable as possible. You know, like I said, I would imagine a decent amount of teams are having that conversation as well. I mean, collectively, I think the entire league kind of underwent a traumatic event. And now this is the question of how you sort through it and how you address it and what sort of resources are provided. It, you know, going back to the physicality and the violence of the sport and what we thought might be this kind of moment in a blow to the head, it's, I think the two things can be true at the same time in that we've never seen something like this. This is one of the worst moments in the history of the NFL in terms of a tragedy happening on the field, but the game has gotten safer.

Now, think about a couple weeks ago during the Colts game, the Colts Chargers game, where Derwin James has that hit. 10 years ago, that would have been a highlight on jacked up. Now, the collective response to that moment is that can't happen. We need to get that out of the sport, and his ejection is completely warranted. And even you go to other sports, like at the moment that has been shared a lot today, and he's talked about it, Chris Pronger, who played for the Blues in 1998, took a slap shot to the chest, and a similar thing happened. And, you know, he had a moment where it took a blow to the chest at a specific moment in the heart's rhythm, and it can lead to this sort of outcome.

And I don't want to speculate about what happened last night. But so are these trying to square all of those things. You know, the fact that the game has kind of progressed in certain ways. This has happened in other sports and what that ultimately means for what we saw last night, how we process it and how we try to contextualize the violence that we watch on Sundays, I think is it's going to be an ongoing thing. And I think it's a really difficult thing to untangle. Yeah, and that's something I was struck by a little bit is, you know, the most recent example that people were pointing out happened in soccer and it was non-contact thing. And that's an underlying, you know, cardiac situation, but a guy passes out, goes down, needs to be defibrillated back and luckily has a good outcome. But the fact that a cardiac situation, again, can happen in other sports without contact,

talking to one of my friends who's a doctor and who has some knowledge of this kind of stuff and the Commodio Cardus or whatever it is gets brought about and she was just like I'd be really shocked if it's that because like you said it takes such a specific like shock and force you know usually it's a baseball hitting a guy in the chest or like you said a hockey puck to the chest it's not you know again a relatively normal tackle to a guy who's fully padded there were a lot of things that needed to happen if that actually is what happened that didn't seem possible in that kind of a hit, that kind of a tackle. So yeah, the squaring away of like, is this actual, is this actually possible in the future? Is it possible for more guys to have this happen? That is a valid question because

again, this has now happened. So it's feasible that it could happen again. And the flip side, like you said, the game is insanely safer than it used to be. Like helmets are safer. There's more awareness, you know, coaches are coaching out using the head as the driving force of put your head here, put your head there, lead with the head. Like now you have other cues. And if your, your cues are now, your shoulder, your hands, all this other stuff, maybe, I mean, the idea is, and what will happen over time, like, you stop using that as quite the weapon that you used to. Like, it used to be literally head hunting. That's what we called it. So the game is a lot safer than it used to be. there is an element that like you're not going to make the game safe like i think there are you know

you see every now and again certain stuff and usually it's with concussion protocol and all that like you're not going to make the game safe you can make protocol more helpful to have guys in better situations if bad things do happen um but there is a squaring away of you just have to know that there are bad things that can't happen i i just think that no one's mind went to a situation that like, hey, my heart could stop on the field because I made a normal tackle and now this bad outcome can happen. I just didn't think that that was a thought that was in any player's mind. I didn't think that was a thought that really resonated with anybody. And, you know, to me, that's the biggest change going forward.

What do you think the conversation is like about how players are going to move forward and when that ultimately happens? You know, as far as we know, the league has said that they will not make up the game this week and there have been no changes to the week 18 schedule, recording this at 5 p.m. Central time on Tuesday afternoon. How do you think players ultimately make that decision and get to that place where they're going to be ready to play again? Because it will come.

Yeah, I mean, for the other 30 teams, again, I think you kind of take it to heart and you feel like shit and you cry and you're sad and all that stuff. but being a step removed from it, even if you were a teammate in college or even if you're a friend of him or you know, you were on Buffalo last year type of thing. Like I still think there's distance where you have a few days to process it and you're with the other guys who maybe aren't quite as affected, even though that sounds a little, you know, kind of brutal to say. But like it is true. I mean, there are guys on other teams who maybe aren't affected or they don't really, you know, feel the empathy or the closeness and the, and the emotional. motion. And so you're in, again, a more regular schedule and you've got this normal game coming up this weekend and you just kind of go along with things. And you have a few days to work through it. You also get back to practice. And I think that's maybe the stepping stone to kind of get back on the

field and to play is it's not, man, we just, like if this had happened on a Saturday night game and there were NFL games the next Sunday, like I think that's a much different conversation. I think they might have had to, you know, pause that Sunday, wait a couple days to play the games. But you have the week to kind of process things. You have a week of practice to get back on the field, do things at a lower tempo, like you're not fully padded. So you have most wearing helmets and, you know, it's not a non-contact practice. There is still some contact. But you've got this ability to kind of work back into getting on a field and being okay with

contact and being comfortable with it. for Sincy and for Buffalo, I don't know that answer. I'm not sure. I mean, honestly, I would imagine Buffalo probably forfeits this week. I can't imagine them playing football this week. If they do, I don't know how they're going to do it. But I could very easily just see, like, hey, we just need this week off. Like, we'll figure it out for the playoffs, but we need a week to figure it out.

Because, again, like, we're not getting good news. There hasn't been the, like, hey, he's okay. Hey, he's breathing on his own. Like, we haven't gotten any of that stuff yet. And so I don't know that they can kind of turn the page that quickly and get back into trying to play football. And even if, again, I mean, I'm sure they're having discussions, team, coaches, players, leadership, even if it's like we're going to take off till Friday and we'll cram the schedule and we'll just do like a walk through Friday, a walk through Saturday, we'll try to play Sunday. I don't know that that is enough and I don't know that the guys are going to be okay with that. So I could see, you know, for those two teams that are most impacted, obviously, you know, just taking football off the table this week as a plausible outcome.

Because being that close to it and not having any sort of resolution that, hey, this guy is better or there's this tangible path to him, you know, leading a normal life again. It's hard to, I mean, it's not technically closure, but like that closure on the situation that like, hey, this guy's okay. like the closure on the injury that things will be okay. You know, I'm not sure that they're going to get that. And so I don't know how you turn the page without getting some sort of clarification on it, you know, as quick enough as you need to to then turn around and play in, you know, six days or five days, whatever it is now. So, yeah, I think for the other 30 teams, like they got the week of practice to kind of get back in the flow of it

and whether they take a day or too off and whether they ease off of practice and kind of allow things to get back to normal. I could see that. But, you know, I'd imagine all those other games go on. relatively as planned. Even Cincinnati, I would imagine, you know, they take a few days off and let their guys work through it. But for Buffalo, I don't know. And, you know, it's all speculation.

And just being in a similar situation, I can't imagine they really give a shit about the game this weekend. And so I can't imagine them saying, like, hey, we need to rally to be mentally resilient enough to compartmentalize and to like put our best foot forward this Sunday. I could just see them saying, like, who gives a fuck? Like, I mean, the playoffs or the playoffs that's a little bit different. Like, this game doesn't mean anything. We don't give a fuck if we're the one seat or not. Like, let's take a week off. Let's do what we need to do to, you know, be there for our guy to be there for each other.

And, you know, we'll figure it out once the playoffs come. Yeah, I mean, that would be unprecedented, but this entire thing is unprecedented. And I think that that's really one of the big takeaways over the last 24 hours is what we've seen from players, from coaches, you know, from people in the league, about what it takes to really grind things to a halt in a way that we've really never, ever seen. I mean, I've watched football for a long time. I've covered football for a long time.

This is a completely unprecedented situation. And I think that last night, it justified and called for an unprecedented solution. And that might be the case for the people in that building. I would totally understand that. Yeah. And again, there's no right or wrong. Like, I think, again, with everything. we know about mental health and with, I know you talk about therapy all the time. Like,

everyone seems to go to therapy these days. I do. Like, it's awesome. I think everyone should try to make themselves better mentally. Like, I think the thing we've learned is there's not like a wrong way to process things. Like, you're going to process it how you do and trying to figure out kind of how the pieces fall into place after the fact is really what you do. Like, you don't try to say, well, you shouldn't feel sad or you should be okay and you should be able to ready to play this weekend. There's no shoulds. It's just this is how I feel. This is how I'm reacting.

And we'll try to figure it out from there. And so I do think that the guys will be given the space to do that, at least in this one week period, you know, how it stretches on and gets into the playoffs. And again, that's the difference with football is it's just, it's difficult to shrink the schedule. Like in basketball or baseball, you know, I think basketball, they pause some games during social justice because guys needed to take. a step back. They, you know, were feeling terrible and like they couldn't play because all of their energy and their focus was on bad things that were happening in society. And so they, you know, took that step back and you're able to kind of maneuver that schedule where football, you know, you're on a bit more of a fixed schedule and you're kind of stuck in that weekly thing and, you know,

you can only move the playoff schedule around so much. Maybe I should expect more. Maybe this is just naivete on my part. It's encouraging to me that you think that's how it's going to be handled in some of these places, where guys are going to be given time, especially in Buffalo, where guys are going to be given time to grieve and process this. And the treatment of it is that you shouldn't just push through this. Like there's no reward for, you know, showing perseverance through this moment. It should be something that you process in your own way on your own time. That's encouraging to me to hear because maybe I'm not giving the NFL or the people in the NFL enough credit, but it is a little bit surprising that you think that might be the framing of it in some of these places.

Well, I don't know if that's giving the NFL credit. I mean, to me, it's coming from a place of like player empowerment. And we've realized that with other sports that the players to say no, and they say no. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a much different game. And we've seen all these hard-ass coaches like, you know, quote unquote turns soft.

I mean, they haven't turned soft. But they just, they understand the mentality of guys these days. It's different. Like, people are more in touch with their emotions. they're more willing to be vulnerable and to try to work through that. And so I do think there's a lot more empathy from, you know, the coaching staff and from people who are traditionally just like, rah, rah, rough, like I don't care what's happening.

Like you need to play football and be tough. Because, again, a lot of those guys played. A lot of those guys have had tragedies in their life and in other areas. And so there's a shared kind of empathy that they can all relate to it in some way or another. It's not, you know, you guys are being soft because. you can't cope with someone on another team getting injured. I just don't think anyone is thinking that.

And I think a lot of that. Do you think that thinking has shifted in the past 10 years? Do you think this would have been the approach or the mindset when you got into the league? I would imagine it shifted. Yeah, I can't say with obviously any certainty or what I think would have happened if this happened when I was a rookie. I just know that the viewpoint has shifted and players are, again, allowed to take personal days. like, you know, 10 years ago, did we ever see guys taking personal days to take a Wednesday off for practice or like to have a few days off in training camp or like other things? Like, I feel like we

never saw that. And if we did, it was a massive story that, you know, one guy took one day off because he needed a personal day. But now that seems to happen more regularly, whether it's a family member getting hurt or whatever or sick or anything else. Like it just used to be whatever else was happening outside football, happened outside football, and you're here. And it was like a huge deal to step away from the team for any reason. And I think that idea has definitely shifted in the last few years and over the last decade. So, yeah, I think things probably would have been handled differently a decade or more ago.

I can't say how that would have been any different. But I do think the mindset's different. I think, again, we're just all more aware of mental health and what needs to happen from the player perspective to allow guys to work through how they're feeling and also to feel better about any given situation. Speaking of that player perspective, I sincerely appreciate you giving us yours and for helping people understand and contextualize everything that's happened over the last day or so. So thank you very much for the time, my friend.

I really, really appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks for having me. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Like, again, when we were watching it, I just, I couldn't think what was actually happening that was making them look that way and react that way. And it's, you know, your mind goes to dark. places and you hope like, oh shit, I hope this isn't, you know, the worst case scenario. And I mean,

that's like the only thing that you can think when something that awful is happening and you see all the reactions. So, you know, obviously you're just hoping for the best for him and, you know, hopefully there's some sort of good outcome for him and he's able to get back to, I mean, a normal life. I don't think anyone gives a fuck about football. Like just get back to living a normal life. And that's all we can hope for at this point. Yeah. I mean, that's what matters. It's really all that matters at this point is the news. that we're going to get, hopefully, over the coming days about his status and what his outlook is. So thank you very much, Mitch, and we'll talk to you down the road, my friend.

All right. See you. All right, guys. That's all we got. Thank you for spending this time with us. It's obviously been a difficult day for a lot of people. And even talking through this is challenging. But I felt it was important to give some context and to shine some light on what has happened.

So thank you for spending the time with us. And we'll be back later in the week. We're going to talk about what's going to potentially happen on Sunday. but we're going to save that for another day. So appreciate the time. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the athletic football show.