Nick Sirianni is as shaken as everyone else by what happened Monday night in Cincinnati.
In the first quarter of the Bills’ Monday Night Football game against the Bengals, Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin was taken to the hospital after collapsing on the field. Hamlin collapsed following a tackle of Bengals wideout Tee Higgins, and CPR was performed on him on the field before he was taken away in an ambulance.
The Bills said overnight that he suffered cardiac arrest and is in critical condition. The game eventually was postponed.
It was a horrifying scene, one that was a painful reminder of the dangers the sport presents. It came just a few days after the Eagles had a scare of their own with defensive end Josh Sweat, who was carted off the field with a neck injury during Sunday’s loss to the Saints.
Sweat sustained the injury in a collision with Adam Prentice, and was face down for a few minutes before being put on a stretcher.
The 25-year-old was later released from the hospital, and said on Twitter he expects to play again this season. But the Hamlin injury put things in perspective for Sirianni, he said on “Angelo Cataldi and the Morning Team.”
“It puts everything in perspective. You come back to work and you have a loss that you’re really upset about, and you’re thinking about that, and then something like that happens at night and puts everything in perspective," Sirianni said. "These players put their bodies on the line, and I know we’ve got some guys that know him, the first thought obviously is for the kid, that he’s OK, and then you want to check on your guys that know him.
“A lot of things go through your mind. You think about Josh Sweat and how fortunate he is that he was able to get up and be OK. It’s tough to watch, I think my exact words were that I was just kind of in shock. You don’t see that very often, you don’t see that happen in this game very often.
“It’s a violent sport, as we know, but I just thought about everything – how you would lead the team in that matter and everything. So many things go through your mind there, and at the end of the day I just hope at the end of the day Damar is OK and the people close to him are OK and that he’ll fight through this and get up from this.
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