Doctors Say Damar Hamlin Is Improving While Still in Critical Condition

“Knowing that he’s OK, that he’s doing better, it makes me feel better inside,” Higgins said. He said he did not immediately realize the severity of the injury, but as the scene unfolded, he was “not in a good space” to finish the rest of the game.

Troy Vincent, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president of football operations, said early Tuesday morning that there had been no consideration of resuming play on Monday night after Hamlin’s collapse. But in a news conference on Thursday, representatives from the N.F.L. Players Association called into question the length of time, about an hour from when Hamlin’s injury occurred, that it took for the N.F.L. to announce that it was suspending the game.

J.C. Tretter, a retired N.F.L. center who is the players’ union president, said that the players had no interest in continuing to play on Monday night. According to the N.F.L. rule book, the decision is up to Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“In times when a leader needs to make a decision, when you take a bunch of time to ask everybody else what their opinion would be, it seems more like you’re searching for the answer you want, not what the right answer actually is,” Tretter said. “We made the determination it wouldn’t be smart to continue playing the moment we saw what happened and how scary that was. Again, as we all know, it took a long time for that to actually go into effect.”

The league had still not made an official announcement on Thursday about whether the Bills-Bengals game would be resumed. The matchup had significant playoff implications in the A.F.C., and with the final week of regular-season games starting Saturday, the N.F.L. faces significant competitive questions amid Hamlin’s recovery.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/sports/football/damar-hamlin-bills-week-18-patriots.html