Hamlin’s Tragedy Should Make us Appreciate Football Players

It was business as usual for the NFL on Sunday. Fans were back to enjoying football after worrying about Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest that took place in a Monday night game against the Cincinnati Bengals just after he had made a tackle on Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins.

I didn’t bother watching most of the Week 18 games. I had no interest, especially in watching the Green Bay Packers’ matchup against the Detroit Lions on Sunday Night Football. But a funny thing happened. I turned the game on after halftime since America was tweeting about it, and I decided to watch to see whether or not the Lions could deny the Packers a playoff spot. It’s a good thing I did since Detroit won 20-16 over Green Bay. We all enjoyed it.

This shows right there that the NFL will continue to ignite our interest until the end of time despite concussions, scandals, career-threatening injuries and even deaths. The games are too good and entertaining to stop us from watching. They serve as a diversion from our grinding lives. A once-a-week fall sport for five months drives our interest.

Just look at Sunday night’s game. The Lions got everyone talking on Twitter and Reddit after they knocked the Packers out of the playoffs. They were commended for playing to win despite being eliminated before kickoff after the Seattle Seahawks secured a 19-16 overtime victory over the Los Angeles Rams at Lumen Field. They could have been deflated and just quit, but they didn’t. That’s a tribute to the team and to larger-than-life Lions head coach Dan Campbell. America loves to suck up stories like this one.

If nothing else, football makes us appreciate the athletes that play this gladiator sport. They are risking their lives every time they step onto the field. They could lose their life in an instant. They could also lose their life decades later after taking so many hits to the brain. I can think of so many players that died because of CTE. We lost Junior Seau so young, and Dave Duerson.

So many players understandably are wondering if they need to retire soon. There’s a reason the NFL stands for Not For Long. It’s not just about head coaches, general managers and players coming and going, it’s about players that could lose their lives more quickly than they think.

It looks like Hamlin is going to be okay as he has regained consciousness. With that said, it’s going to be a long road to recovery. This does not even begin to say when he will regain his playing career, which is beside the point.

Despite all the drawbacks of the sport, players will want to play because it’s an instant gratification sport. They enjoy the adulation and money that comes with it. If you make a great play, you become a hero, and rightfully so because you put so much work and sacrifice into it.

Football is not just popular with the pros, but it’s also popular in college and high school.

I covered high school football for the now-defunct Ridgefield Park Patriot. I used to cover the Ridgefield Park Scarlets from 2007 to 2013. Covering and writing about them, I described football players being hailed as heroes for winning games and entertaining the crowd. They loved this stuff as they worked hard to be heroes in their town and school. I always appreciated the work they put in after school when they practiced.

It’s not easy to tell young kids or anyone with football aspirations not to play the sport. It’s ingrained in their mind to play it.

This is why we should not take anyone playing football for granted. We should always appreciate them. I know it’s crazy to appreciate them in the same way as doctors, firefighters, cops and soldiers, but you can make a case that they deserve that type of appreciation. They are putting their bodies on the line for our entertainment and our pride.

For the players, this might as well be life and death. That’s what Hamlin’s play was all about the other day. For the first responders to come onto the field to give CPR in an attempt to resuscitate the Bills safety, it was as sobering as it gets.

It took a week for all of us to recover. However, the game goes on just as life does. There’s money to be made for the owners. We need to keep being entertained or the world would be a more depressing place. We have the playoffs commencing this weekend.

Sunday served as a recovery process. We moved past denial, anger and bargaining. We skipped depression to come to acceptance. For me, it took me until the third quarter of the Lions game against the Packers. Eventually, we were going to be back. The game does not stop.

But if there is one thing we can now understand, it’s that football will certainly not have us take these players for granted from now on and it will raise more awareness about the impact the game has on the players in a physical sense. It will make us understand that these players are humans that take the game seriously.

I for one never questioned how hard the players play in a violent sport.

Sunday and everyday should make us thankful these guys play football not just for themselves, but also for us.

You can follow me or reach me on Twitter: @LMonteiroJSN