Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, collapsed during the second quarter of Monday night’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals after a routine hit on Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins.
Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest, received CPR on the field, and was rushed to a local Cincinnati hospital. He remains in critical condition and on a breathing machine despite vital normal signs as of early Monday morning.
During the game, ESPN’s Joe Buck said four times that the NFL had issued a five-minute warning to teams before the resumption of play.
NFL executive Troy Vincent denied that report after the game.
But the NFL world did not buy the League’s excuse as to why they delayed canceling the game for more than an hour.
“Joe Buck stated it on-air as fact four separate times so figuring out who is lying should be pretty straightforward,” Timothy Burke of the Defector said on Twitter.
“The first mention of the ‘resume play after five minutes,'” Burke continued, “came at 9:15 Eastern. The NFL could have contacted its broadcast partner immediately to correct that, were it inaccurate information, but did not—and it was repeated on-air even as the broadcast show closed at 10:54.”
Fans were also quick to point to footage of Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow throwing on the sidelines, but if that was due to league order or his own premonition remains unknown.
“Troy Vincent has made up scandals and had rules changed during games…Buck said multiple times they got the word from the NFL…it should be fairly obvious who is lying,” one fan wrote.
“Not a lie, more likely simple miscommunication and the network rep wanted (of course) to believe play would resume,” another fan reasoned.
“It would be so easy for the NFL to say that a five-minute warmup is standard procedure for serious injuries and in this case the game officials mistakenly leaned on the usual rule when exceptional circumstances required a different response,” Bleacher Report writer Joseph Zucker said.
Whether the NFL or ESPN got it wrong remains to be seen.
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