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The nature of football means NFL games routinely come to a halt while trainers attend to an injured player. However, there was really no way to prepare for what unfolded when Damar Hamlin suddenly collapsed on the field when the Bills and the Bengals faced off on Monday Night Football earlier this month.
The Buffalo safety has made some incredible progress since he was rushed to the hospital after going into cardiac arrest, but there was an incredible amount of uncertainty concerning his condition as the terrifying moment unfolded on live television.
The members of the broadcasting team tasked with covering the contest were consequently put in a very unenviable situation as tens of millions of viewers tuned into ABC and ESPN in search of updates and answers to questions nobody was able to adequately address at the time.
The NFL has deservedly caught heat for allegedly informing the two teams they’d have five minutes to resume the game before the contest was ultimately suspended, but the announcers and analysts working the showdown deserve a ton of credit for handling things about as well as they could.
That includes Booger McFarland, who struck the perfect tone while sharing the studio with a visibly disheartened Suzy Kolbert and Adam Schefter. While there was really nothing to say at the time, the trio still had a job to do, and McFarland and his colleagues handled things with the utmost professionalism by showing an incredible amount of empathy while resisting the urge to speculate.
The former defensive tackle shed some more light on what went down on that fateful night during a recent conversation on Pardon My Take where he addressed what was going through his head while covering the traumatic development.
McFarland noted he was somewhat prepared for what went down, as he’d previously covered the immediate wake of Kobe Bryant’s death and Aaron Hernandez’s suicide on the air at ESPN. He also shared the mindset he harnessed when confronted with yet another scenario concerning a developing tragedy, saying:
“I’ve been on the air in a couple of really bad situations where I’ve had to react, and often times for me, man, what’s worked best is just A) don’t speculate, B) be honest, and just try to show a little bit of human empathy toward whatever situation it is, man.
So, it feels kind of weird when people say, “Hey man, great job,” because I feel like, we all have the capability of just being a human. Like, show some decency, show some respect. You know, try not to be a butthole in that situation, which is what I tried to do.”
Well said.
[Barstool]