RENTON — Pete Carroll aptly summed up the mindset of the football world — those on the inside, and those who live it vicariously — as they all try to process the tragic specter of Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin fighting for his life.
“We’re not looking for answers,” the Seahawks coach said Wednesday. “We’re just looking for some kind of solace.”
Everyone who watched Monday’s catastrophic event in Cincinnati — when Hamlin collapsed during a game against the Bengals after suffering cardiac arrest following a tackle — has to reexamine their relationship with football, to some level. What draws us to a sport that is predicated on violence, with the possibility of serious injury always lurking? And what keeps us coming back?
But it is the players themselves, who put their bodies on the line every week? They have to dig the deepest — into places deep in their psyche where they often tuck away such thoughts, out of sight and mind. Because to bring them into the light of day is simply too frightening.
Yet after watching Hamlin lay still on the ground and then ride off in an ambulance to an uncertain future, it was impossible not to have some sort of reckoning. That process is going on throughout the NFL, and it’s happening in Seattle, where Carroll has been at the forefront of trying to navigate his players through the most sobering athletic event any of them have seen in their lifetime.
The games, after all, will go on. The Seahawks have just a few days to get their minds right — or as right as possible, under the circumstances — before playing a vital game Sunday against the Rams.
“The guys are ready to get after it,” Carroll said. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t feel it.”
Some will have the pragmatic outlook of receiver DK Metcalf, whose perspective is forged by surviving his profound health scare while playing college football at Mississippi.
“We know what we signed up for every time we go out there and put on our helmet and step on the field. It’s just a risk that we all live with,” Metcalf said. “I’m not thinking about that when I go play. I’ve broken my neck already, so I’m not scared of anything.”
But Quandre Diggs, who plays the same position as Hamlin — safety — said it’s virtually impossible to put the thought of injury completely out of your head. Especially when you’ve suffered one as serious as the broken leg and ankle Diggs incurred last season.
“You try to, but, heck, I would be lying to you guys if I didn’t go out there and every time and every game at some moment, I think about how I broke my leg,” Diggs said. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t. People don’t see that. People are like, ‘Oh, he’s a robot, he will just go out there and play.’ That’s trauma, that’s real-life trauma.
“Stuff like that, it’s hard to tune that out. Guys that have had serious injuries, have had to be carted off or things like that — you think about that stuff. You think about how my ankle and my leg will never be the same. I will always have 12 or 13 screws in my leg and a tightrope in my ankle. … I left the house last year with two legs and came back with one. It just kind of changes things. When you see stuff like that, it definitely makes you think about it differently.”
One can look at Hamlin’s injury as a fluke, once-in-a-generation event. The only player to die in the course of a game was the Detroit Lions’ Chuck Hughes, who had a heart attack while running back to the huddle in 1971. But that doesn’t make it any less terrifying, or any less real.
And it doesn’t dim the cumulative effect of regularly seeing teammates go down, and witnessing the profound health struggles that many NFL players experience when their careers end. Everyone knows the names of those who suffered dire outcomes on the football field. Darryl Stingley. Mike Utley. Ryan Shazier. Carroll was on the Jets coaching staff in 1992 when defensive lineman Dennis Byrd wound up paralyzed from a collision. (Byrd ended up walking again but died in a car accident in 2016.)
Such risks are inherent to football — “what we signed up for,” in Metcalf’s words. But many players hope that if the Hamlin situation has any positive effect, it’s that it drives home to fans that these are humans, with emotions and vulnerabilities, not superhuman gladiators.
“Just for the outside world looking at the TV or at football players playing with the number and the last name on our back, it’s much more than just a game for us,” Metcalf said. “We know what we signed up for, and we know the risk, and we still go out there and lay our lives on the line every day. It just shows the type of attitude, the type of people, and the type of courage that we have to just go out there and play.”
As much as players and fans have been traumatized by the Hamlin injury, family members who have to watch their loved ones put their bodies on the line might be the most deeply affected. Diggs said he makes sure to call his mom before every game, and hug his fiancé and 3-year-old daughter extra tight. Yet he also knows that if he carries a tentative or fearful attitude onto the field, it could make the situation even more dangerous.
Speaking of the general mood he anticipates Sunday, Diggs said, “I think it will be heavy, for sure. I am sure that we will have a moment of silence, we will play the national anthem, and I am sure that some of those jittery feelings will kind of fade. When the ball is snapped, you just try to lock into what you do, because you never want to go out there and be half locked in and halfway out. That’s how injuries really happen.
“I just think that we have to try to go out there and do our job to the best of our abilities, control what we can control, and hopefully, in the next day or so, we get some really, really good news on Damar. I think that will put guys at ease a little bit more if we can get some updates.”
That would indeed qualify as a measure of solace. But answers will be harder to come by.