Damar Hamlin’s medical emergency Monday night, going into cardiac arrest on the field following a collision with Bengals receiver Tee Higgins, was seen as a needed wakeup call, reiterating how unflinchingly brutal football can be. While the threat of danger is, arguably, football’s biggest selling point, incidents like what occurred Monday night—as eerie and haunting a scene as you’ll witness in professional sports—leave us with more questions than answers, wondering aloud whether we can, in good conscience, support an endeavor so inherently dangerous.
We’ve been having this dialogue for years, framing football, America’s favorite guilty pleasure, as the ultimate moral conundrum, an ethical dilemma pitting our love of athletic competition against the grim backdrop of unbearable tragedy. Our societal infatuation with violence is well worth exploring, though recent attempts to make football safer, whether by overhauling the rules or enacting a rigorous concussion protocol, have largely failed, stopgaps and half-measures as useless as slapping a Band-Aid on a bullet wound (ESPN personality Bomani Jones equated such efforts to the farce of concocting a “safe cigarette”).
So, as the great Axl Rose once asked, “Where do we go now?” Player safety has and always will be a thorny subject with plenty of differing opinions. One standpoint would be that players know the sacrifices required of them as torchbearers for a cruel game waged by modern gladiators, risking their lives for our entertainment. Others would argue that football takes unfair advantage of young, disproportionately black athletes, subjecting them to unconscionable physical and emotional pain, navigating a ruthless obstacle course paved by opioids and the looming prospect of CTE.
With loved ones urging players to come to their senses, abandoning their abusive relationship with football once and for all, it would be understandable if Mike Evans was having second thoughts about his career choice, though even after seeing Hamlin in peril Monday night, the Buccaneers veteran remains firmly committed to his chosen profession. In fact, if anything, the incident has inspired him to play harder, realizing now that any play could be his last.
“Me, personally, it was scary to see,” said Evans, who recently set an NFL record with his ninth consecutive 1,000-yard receiving season, the most ever to begin a career. “But it just makes me want to go even harder. Because you never know when it’s going to be your last time. You’ve got to give it your all every time.”
It’s a startling admission, though maybe not surprising given the mindset most athletes have, displaying a level of fearlessness and determination unique to contact sports. Playing scared in the NFL is a good way to wind up hurt, with opponents all too happy to exploit any perceived vulnerability. You can call it toxic or barbaric if you want, but football played any other way just wouldn’t be the same, a reality that Evans has come to accept, cognizant of the risk he’s making each and every Sunday by stepping on an NFL field.
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