Players gather for a prayer after an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots on Jan. 8.The Associated Press
They prayed for Damar, honked for Damar and showered love on Damar on Sunday at Highmark Field. On a grey, frigid afternoon in Buffalo, fans waved signs in the shape of a heart for Damar Hamlin, the Bills safety who collapsed to the turf on Monday night after he went into cardiac arrest.
Players on both teams came out for warm-ups wearing shirts emblazoned with Hamlin’s No. 3. The crowd held up three fingers in gloved hands in a salute to the 24-year-old who remains in critical condition in an intensive-care unit in Cincinnati. On the Buffalo sideline, tears ran down players’ cheeks during the national anthem.
In the wee hours early Saturday – 2:31 a.m. to be precise – Hamlin texted teammate Tre’Davious White and apologized to him. “I’m sorry I did this to you all.”
As if.
“I just want to hug the hell out of him,” White said.
It has been an emotional week in Western New York and throughout the football world, a week in which Hamlin was near death, awoke on Wednesday, began to breathe on his own on Thursday and briefly engaged with the team via video call on Friday.
On Sunday on social media he posted a photo of himself in bed, flanked by his parents Mario and Nina, as they prepared to watch the Bills take on the New England Patriots. After the Bills won, 35-23, he used Facebook to call his teammates in the dressing room.
He was awarded a game ball along with training staff who helped save his life after he made a tackle against the Bengals on Monday Night Football, got up and then tumbled backward as his heart stopped.
“For Damar to go through what he went through, it touched a lot of our hearts,” Tremaine Edmunds, a Buffalo linebacker, said after the victory. The Bills finished the regular season 13-3 and face the visiting Miami Dolphins next weekend in the playoffs. “It was a tough week for all of us.
“In particular it was tough being on the field today and know the same thing that happened to him could happen to any of us.”
As is custom, hearty Bills fans partook in elaborate tailgate parties, beginning a mile before the stadium, which is in the suburb of Orchard Park. One who appeared well lubricated stood in the upper deck, wind whipping around him, in a T-shirt in sub-zero temperatures.
The place exploded when Buffalo’s Nyheim Hines returned the opening kickoff 96 yards for a touchdown. After catching the ball, he started up the centre of the field and then veered to the right sideline and out-galloped all giving chase.
It took 14 seconds and erased much of the anxiety that had built up here over the past seven days.
“We wanted to come out and play free and loose for Damar, and for us to score on the opening kickoff could not have been scripted better,” said Josh Allen, the Bills quarterback. “For me, it was spiritual to watch it. Bone-chilling.
“I can’t remember a play that ever touched me like that. I went around my teammates on the sideline saying, ‘God is real.’”
Allen paused and choked back tears as he added that it was the Bills’ first kickoff return for a score in three years and three months. He wore a ball cap with the No. 3 above its bill and a No. 3 patch near his left shoulder. Allen also threw for three touchdowns, and Buffalo made three interceptions.
Hines put the Bills ahead for good at 21-17 in the third quarter when he ran another kickoff back, this time for 101 yards. It is only the 11th time a player has returned two kickoffs for scores in one game in NFL history, and the first time since Leon Washington of Seattle did so on Sept. 26, 2010.
“It was extremely special,” Dion Dawkins, a 320-pound offensive tackle, said with his rambunctious three-year-old, Delilah, on his knee. “Things like that don’t just don’t happen. It shows God is real. We are blessed that Damar was with us.
“There is a weird energy now that seems to be flowing to each and every one of us.”
As he talked, Delilah played with the microphone in front of him. “It’s not so scary,” she said as she surveyed an interview room full of journalists.
The Patriots put up a good effort. The game was tied 14-14 at the half before the Bills pulled away. New England’s Mac Jones threw for 243 yards and also three touchdowns; Allen finished with 254 yards in a workman-like effort.
Hines had once returned two kicks for touchdowns in a single game for Indianapolis – a punt and a kickoff. He finished with four kickoff returns for 235 yards. After his second touchdown, the Patriots tried to kick away from him but it backfired when the ball trickled out of bounds and Buffalo got the ball to start a drive at its 40-yard line.
“It was electric,” Hines said of the first touchdown. “It was a special moment for me, but everything that happened was for Damar. I am just speechless. It’s more than about me.
“In Cincinnati we learned that there are so many things bigger than football.”
Allen had touchdown passes of four yards to Dawson Knox, 42 yards to John Brown, who made a diving catch on his fingertips, and 49 yards to Stefon Diggs.
Knox held up three fingers as cameras caught him in the end zone after his score.
Buffalo’s players knelt at midfield after the game and then raised their hands, all showing the No. 3.
“Going in there were a lot of unknowns,” said Sean McDermott, the Bills coach. “I wasn’t sure how the guys would handle it. It is a unique situation for us. To see Nyheim come out and score in the opening seconds was really surreal.”
He tipped his cap to Buffalo’s raucous fans – they call themselves the Bills Mafia.
“We lift each other up,” McDermott said. “We need them like they need us. That is what we do for each other.”