Bills Starter Offers Reminder Amid Scary Damar Hamlin Situation

At this juncture, the focus of the Bills organization could not be more singular.

Buffalo isn’t concerned about how its remaining regular-season schedule will be played out, and quite frankly, its playoff aspirations probably are on the back burner as well. As it stands, the Bills are only worried about the wellness of Damar Hamlin, who suffered cardiac arrest on the Paycor Stadium field Monday night and remains in critical condition as of Wednesday morning.

Professional sports — and especially the NFL — are fast-moving and fans understandably are always eager to know what’s next. But for this particular and unprecedented case, Dion Dawkins is hoping the sports world can be patient with the Bills.

“We are human,” Buffalo’s starting left tackle said Tuesday night on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” “We are not athletes, we are not superstars, we are not celebrities, we are not anything. We are humans at this moment. We are vulnerable humans. Our brother is fighting. We have taken off all of that armor and we’re just being human. The humans that we are — it’s our brotherhood. We are uniting with positive vibes and positive spirits and positive prayer. With being a human, you kind of just take it for what it is because we’re all learning how to deal with this situation together. This is not a situation that the average person will go through.

“When something like this happens, it kind of just makes you realize that we play a sport to entertain the world, right? With entertaining the entire world, we put our bodies, our minds, our careers on the line every single play. With something like this happening, it shows that not only was his career on the line because everybody his fighting for their best rep. Now, you have somebody who’s fighting for their life as well.

“This should really just put a shock into everybody that it’s quick to go on Twitter and it’s quick to say anything bad about any athlete. Like, ‘Oh, he missed that layup’ or ‘he dropped that pass’ or ‘he fumbled that ball’ or ‘he missed that block.’ We’re all human and we try to be our best all we possibly can. At the end of the day, we are humans and we have families and we care, we cry and we’re vulnerable and we have emotions and we feel the same pain that the regular person feels.”

Sentiments in Dawkins’ message match many of those expressed Monday night by Ryan Clark, an NFL cornerback-turned-analyst. Like Dawkins, Clark urges fans and media members alike to remember NFL players are people first and athletes second.

As for Hamlin, a positive update on the 24-year-old’s condition was given Tuesday night. According to his uncle, Hamlin now is breathing with 50% assistance from a ventilator, an improvement from 100% when he initially arrived at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.