Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is in critical condition after suffering cardiac arrest and collapsing Monday night when making a tackle during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, team officials said Tuesday afternoon.
"Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following a hit in our game versus the Bengals," the team said in an earlier statement. "His heartbeat was restored on the field and he was transferred to the UC Medical Center for further testing and treatment. He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition."
In the horrifying minutes that followed the tackle, players on both teams could be seen weeping and praying together, and the game was postponed in light of Hamlin's collapse.
Immediately following the incident, Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt seemed to summarize the sentiments of players across the league when he tweeted: “The game is not important. Damar Hamlin’s life is important. Please be ok. Please.”
According to most mainstream media outlets, the leading theory for just how an otherwise healthy 24-year-old athlete at peak physical condition underwent cardiac arrest mid-game is that Hamlin may have suffered something called commotio cordis, in which a direct hit to the chest makes the heart go into arrhythmia.
“I've been watching football my whole life and I've never seen this happen. This is so incredibly rare, it’s like winning the Powerball or getting hit by lightning twice,” Dr. Grant Simons, a cardiac electrophysiologist and chief of heart rhythm services at Hackensack University Medical Center, reportedly told Buzzfeed News.
“There's about a 30th of a second that the heart is even vulnerable to this,” Simons explained. “So not only does the hit have to be in the right spot on the heart and the right amount of force, it also has to be perfectly timed.”
Speculation quickly began to grow on social media that Hamlin’s collapse may have been linked to a COVID vaccination.
“Everybody knows what happened to Damar Hamlin because it's happened to too many athletes around the world since COVID vaccination was required in sports,” former Newsmax correspondent and former OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson wrote Monday night. Robinson was fired from her job at Newsmax for tweeting vaccine conspiracy theories.
For their part, the Hamlin’s family issued a statement Tuesday morning expressing their “sincere gratitude for the love and support shown to Damar during this challenging time.”
“We also want to acknowledge the dedicated first responders and healthcare professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who have provided exceptional care to Damar,” they wrote.
“We feel so blessed to be part of the Buffalo Bills organization and to have their support,” the statement continued.
“We also want to thank Coach Taylor and the Bengals for everything they've done,” the family added. “Please keep Damar in your prayers. We will release updates as soon as we have them."
Professional football has long been known to take a serious toll on the bodies of those who play it – especially their brains. A study of former NFL players who’d donated their brains to science and demonstrated mental illness issues in their lifetime found a full 99% showed diagnostic signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease linked with repetitive head trauma.
But according to data compiled by the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the average NFL player’s “risk of dying of heart disease was lower compared to the general population.” Issues surrounding football players’ heart health tend to manifest in players who are aging and overweight – and Hamlin is neither.