Getty Damar Hamlin #3 of the Buffalo Bills.
Adam Taliaferro, a former defensive back at Penn State, watched in horror as the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during Monday Night Football. As someone who stared down on-field trauma over 22 years ago, he sensed Hamlin’s life was altered forever. Now, he has a simple message for Hamlin, who remained in critical condition January 4 in a Cincinnati hospital.
“The first piece of advice I give anyone going through any catastrophic injury is just patience,” Taliaferro, a 41-year-old former New Jersey Assembly member, told Heavy in a January 3 phone call. “Even more so for athletes, I remember when I had my injury, you want everything to come back quickly. But, with spinal cord injuries, and what happened to Damar, you just aren’t going to recover overnight.”
On September 23, 2000, Taliaferro crumpled to the turf at Ohio Stadium after making a tackle against Ohio State running back Jerry Westbrooks. Taliaferro suffered a severe spinal cord injury on the play, paralyzing him from the waist down for eight months. He would become one among the 3% of people to endure such an injury and regain the ability to walk. Longtime Penn State doctor Wayne Sebastianelli referred to Taliferro as “the miracle.”
Hamlin was administered CPR and taken by ambulance to the hospital. His mother, who was in the stands at Paycor Stadium, rode with her son to University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
“That was the first thing I thought about,” Taliaferro said. “Thankfully his mom was with him. I think about the family, because that’s their son. That’s someone they care about, and unfortunately, it’s out of their hands. As a parent, that’s the most difficult thing, not being able to help in your kid’s greatest moment of need.”
Now Hamlin is in a fight for his life, with length of recovery difficult to predict.
“You need to learn to be patient, and take joy from the small victories each day,” said Taliaferro, who has shared advice with athletes who have suffered significant injuries in the two decades since his own injury. “For folks who can’t breathe on their own, it’s about learning to breathe on your own again. With spinal injuries, just learning to move a finger. It’s all about learning to appreciate the small wins along the journey, because it’s going to be a very long and arduous journey back to getting back to your normal self. Patience is the biggest thing along that journey.”
Just chatted with Damar Hamlin’s family friend @jordonr.
Per Jordon and Damar’s family, doctors overnight got promising readings that they had been hoping to see by this morning. Jordon couldn’t go into specifics, but progress appears to be made.
Though Hamlin’s collapse cast a pall over the entire NFL season, the immediate aftermath offered hope that a divided society is still capable of rallying together for the common good.
In 2020, while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Hamlin launched a GoFundMe for an annual toy drive for children in his hometown community of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, with an initial goal of raising $2,500. By January 4, the fund had gone viral on social media, with over $6 million raised from more than 200,000 donors.
Thanks to donations from across the NFL landscape, from players, from fans and from people hoping to do something, anything, to share in the outpouring of love for Hamlin, the community will benefit immensely from his kind and charitable spirit.
“No one individual or one family can get through these sort of catastrophic injuries or experiences,” Taliaferro said. “It takes a village, and a community to really help uplift the person going through it, but the family.
“We’ve already seen it with Damar, but with me, every day the cards, the e-mails, people coming to the hospital who I had never met in my life, just to say, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about you.’ Those were the things when you are in the hospital, and your hope starts to waver, that renew your hope and positivity. Those are the things Damar is going to need.”
Week 18 NFL Power Rankings
1. Kansas City Chiefs
2. San Francisco 49ers
3. Cincinnati Bengals
4. Buffalo Bills
5. Philadelphia Eagles
6. Dallas Cowboys
7. Green Bay Packers
8. Los Angeles Chargers
9. New York Giants
10. Jacksonville Jaguars
Quotable: Damar Hamlin on His Toy Drive
“I always wanted to make it to this position to be able to give back, to the people coming from where I came from. My first step getting out of college, I always wanted to be able to give back. I saw a great opportunity, it was around Christmas time, I was just finished up at Pitt. The first thing I wanted to do was do a toy drive, and it was a great success. It’s something we did short-handed, but it was an amazing turnout. It was over $5,000 donated, there were so many toys. Everyone in my community was able to come out and get 2 or 3 gifts, and everyone was able to have a really great Christmas. That’s what I wanted to do.” – Bills safety Damar Hamlin on his toy drive
In case there was any doubt about the character of the 24-year-old fighting for his life at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Damar Hamlin Talking About His Toy Drive….So passionate about giving back to others 💔🙏🏽
Final Thought: The NFL Should Push Back Week 18
Hamlin’s medical emergency ultimately led to the NFL postponing what had been the most high-stakes game of the season. The wheels of commerce ground to a stop and the massive playoff implications no longer seemed to matter, the thought of football and what this game means can wait for another day.
As for the business of finishing the NFL season, in the aftermath of the situation Hamlin finds himself in, there are no easy solutions.
On January 3, the NFL released a statement that Bills-Bengals would not be resumed during the week, with the plan being to play the upcoming Week 18 games on Saturday and Sunday as scheduled.
Cincinnati would have kept its hopes for the No. 1 seed in the AFC alive with a victory over the Bills, leapfrogging them for the No. 2 spot entering the final week. Likewise, the Bills would have maintained control of the top seed, had Buffalo left Cincinnati with a win.
Instead, after Monday night’s unprecedented events, the Bengals and Bills now may need to suit up and take the field again six days later; Cincinnati in an AFC North winner take-all tilt in Baltimore and the Bills in front of their home fans against the New England Patriots.
However, those games can wait.
The NFL has built in a bye week between Championship Sunday and the Super Bowl, a week that has been pushed in the past, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and should strongly be considered being pushed again now.
Given what the Bengals and Bills players witnessed on that field, and what scores of players across the league who may know Hamlin, or who may have played with him at the University of Pittsburgh, or who simply may have had their perspective on the game changed forever after watching that moment play out, the league owes it to all involved to prioritize the players and their mental health.
Even if that means pausing the season for one week.
Heavy In The Trenches is a weekly Wednesday column by Heavy’s NFL insider Matt Lombardo, bringing you insight on the latest storylines and rumblings around the league. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattLombardoNFL.