Last night, the NFL world was shaken to its core, and that remains true to this moment.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is currently in critical condition at a Cincinnati-area hospital after a tackle on Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins.
Hamlin got up for one second, and proceeded to fall right back down, prompting medical personnel to rush onto the field.
Medical staff performed CPR for nearly 10 minutes, as well utilized the defibrillator, and gave him oxygen, as players, coaches, and fans looked on, completely stunned at the frightening scene.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott and Bengals head coach Zac Taylor spoke with officials and suspended the game, and ultimately, the NFL postponed the game after the horrific events that had just unfolded.
The game will be made up sometime int he future however, the NFL has confirmed that it won’t be this week.
With that being said, the Buffalo Bills shared their latest update on the status of Hamlin, sharing in a tweet:
“Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following a hit in our game versus the Bengals. His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the UC Medical Center for further testing and treatment.”
Of course, every sports station has been discussing last night’s events today, trying to make sense of how all of this resulted in Damar Hamlin going into cardiac arrest and collapsing.
With that being said, Bart Scott from First Take made a number of people upset, after appearing to say that Tee Higgins hit Hamlin in the chest on purpose. He said Higgins led with the crown of his helmet on Hamlin, hitting him in the exposed chest.
He said:
“Right before the tackle, he lowers his helmet, he kind of throws his body into his chest. He’s standing up because he’s thinking he’s got to chase Tee Higgins at an angle to make a tackle. So he didn’t expect Tee Higgins to launch his body back into him.
You know it’s one of those things where a lot of times you see as a linebacker, unblocked, you know, unnegated running back comes through the hole, and he knows the contact is coming, so he lowers his helmet and you can’t get underneath him, so he’s able to get into you, and your chest is exposed.
They’ve taken that out of the game, but they don’t really regulate it as much as possible, I expect the league to be more vigilant when it comes to that and using that penalty.”
It’s this one pic.twitter.com/MK8rYyFStH
— Willie Lutz (@willie_lutz) January 3, 2023
Now, I don’t really think that Scott is necessarily blaming Higgins here, and he says as much, but is just simply explaining what happened. However, he probably chose his words very, very poorly.
You already know that Higgins is probably hurting as much as anybody, as he feels responsible for this whole thing. But, if you watch the replay of the video, you can see that it was only a standard football move from the Bengals wide receiver, and nothing malicious about it.
However, there are a ton of fans out there who aren’t fans of Scott’s choice of words here.
Just see for yourself:
Bart Scott talked more about the Hamlin injury in this clip:
