Cincinnati, Ohio (WBEN) - Buffalo Bills safety, 24-year-old Damar Hamlin, collapsed on the field during the Monday night football game against the Cincinnati Bengals in the first quarter, inducing worry and fear for fans watching at home and especially in the stadium.
WBEN's Brian Mazurowski was at the stadium during the game and shared the reaction of the stadium as the collapse played out, "The two words that I keep coming back to is just confusion and shock," Brian said Tuesday morning. "Nobody had really the slightest clue for a while exactly how serious this was."
"Even from way up at the top of the stadium, you could begin to see just how players were reacting differently than what you are used to dealing with an injury on the field," Brian said.
Brian mentioned once word got out that this could be life threatening, the mood changed rather quickly, "You can kind of see that go through the stadium. What was a fun, raucous time, really turned into just an eerie quiet in that big stadium."
For Brian and other football fans, you're used to seeing injuries on the field, which is why for some fans in the stadium, the severity of the issue didn't strike them right away, "You still didn't have a good grasp of the severity of the situation, I think it was after the ambulance left, word started are right about that time, it kind of filtered out through people that he collapsed on the field."
For a brief moment, it would appear the game was going to resume, but fans in the stands knew that that probably wasn't going to happen, "A few of them began stretching out on the field and doing a little warm up and I'm kind of looking like, 'Oh wow, I guess they're playing the game,' and my friend sitting next to me, was shaking his head looking at the sidelines saying, 'You can't make these guys play.' That's just the looking at the situation and that lasted maybe a minute or so before everyone kind of went back onto the sideline, the players went into the tunnel," Brian says.
Everybody in the stands eventually filtered out once the as a delay of the game was announced, eventually leading to it being postponed, "Walking out of that stadium was obviously much different than the walk in, where everyone was getting amped up for a game, just, what, 20 minutes before? And then a long, long, long walk out of that stadium that was done mostly in silence. Still even there, there were a few people talking about what was going on. I think, still, a few people had no idea the severity of the situation. There was still a lot of confusion, but aside from that, it was pretty silent."