What happened on Monday night in Cincinnati is a moment many of us will never forget. Not only will Damar Hamlin laying lifeless on the field as first responders performed CPR for nine minutes to revive him be a part of the memory, so will the belief that initially, the NFL planned to give players just five minutes after the ambulance left the field to get ready to resume play.
The NFL has denied this is true. Joe Buck, who announced that plan on ESPN, insists that this was the information the network was given from the league.
On WEEI Wednesday morning, former tight end Jermaine Wiggins told his colleagues on The Greg Hill Show that the league made a mistake in not acknowledging that this was a brand new experience for everyone involved. It wasn’t right to insinuate the voice of the game was a liar or didn’t know what he was talking about.
“It was all about the whole Joe Buck thing where it looks like they’re gonna go back out there. They’re gonna get five minutes to warm up and then they’re gonna continue the game,” Wiggins said. “Just say ‘we were in a situation we have never run into before. Maybe it was misinterpreted the way we wanted to continue.’ Just say that.”
He added that he actually thinks some of the criticism has been unfair. No one can definitively say they knew exactly what to do when it was clear Hamlin was not getting up.
“Listen, I give the NFL credit. This is something they have never seen before. I have been around a lot of football and I have never seen anybody get CPR on the field. We’ve heard from plenty of people that have been around football a lot longer than I have that say they have never seen that before. So, I give them credit of being in a situation where this was all brand new to them and they had no idea how to handle it in the moment.”
The show’s producer, Chris Curtis, took Roger Goodell to task. He wondered why the commissioner did not face the media and acknowledge that in an effort to do things right, the league got it wrong.
