Several times on ESPN’s broadcast Monday night, announcer Joe Buck said that the players were given “five minutes to warm up” after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field.
The NFL was resoundingly criticized on social media after ESPN’s report via Buck that the NFL or the officials planned on playing the game just five minutes after Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and was taken off in an ambulance.
However, the NFL is denying that a five-minute warmup period was given to players. Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said on a media conference call early Tuesday morning that he and Commissioner Roger Goodell never talked about “warming up to resume play.”
“I’m not sure where that came from,” Vincent told reporters. “Frankly, there was no time period for the players to get warmed up. Frankly, the only thing that we asked was that [referee] Shawn [Smith] communicate with both head coaches to make sure they had the proper time inside the locker room to discuss what they felt like was best.
“So I’m not sure where that came from. Five-minute warmup never crossed my mind, personally. And I was the one … that was communicating with the commissioner. We never, frankly, it never crossed our mind to talk about warming up to resume play. That’s ridiculous. That’s insensitive. And that’s not a place that we should ever be in.”
But Buck mentioned four times on the broadcast — including once in which he directly says the league told ESPN — that the players were given five minutes to warm up.
“They’ve been given five minutes to ‘get ready to go back to playing,’” Buck said. “That’s the word we get from the league and the word we get from down on the field.”
Bengals coach Zac Taylor was then seen on ESPN’s broadcast walking across the center of the field with multiple referees to talk with Bills coach Sean McDermott. Shortly after, the game was temporarily suspended and the two teams left the field for the locker rooms. The game was officially suspended about 40 minutes later.
“There was constant communication in real time between ESPN and league and game officials,” ESPN said in a statement to The Athletic’s Jeff Howe. “As a result of that, we reported what we were told in the moment and immediately updated fans as new information was learned. This was an unprecedented, rapidly-evolving circumstance. All night long, we refrained from speculation.”
Hamlin, who was given CPR on the field, was listed in critical condition as of early Tuesday morning, according to the Buffalo Bills’ Twitter account.
• Jacob Calvin Meyer can be reached at jmeyer@washingtontimes.com.
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