No Way Roger Goodell Needed That Long To Call Bengals-Bills Game In Damar Hamlin Case

Yeah, there was so much confusion. Yeah, NFL honchos said they held steady conversations with the refs who huddled with both coaches for more than that hour or so of uncertainty wrapped in horror.

I’m sorry.

There is no way.

None. Zero!

Within milliseconds after the paramedics at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati Monday night spent four, six, nine minutes trying to revive Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on the artificial surface with a defibrillator following his bruising tackle on Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins, there is no way NFL commissioner Roger Goodell could spend another 10 minutes contemplating whether to call or play the game. He continued to wait, and get this: The scene was so gruesome that Bills players formed a human shield around their teammate.

Then another five minutes passed.

I mean, there is no way Goodell still did nothing, not when the only sound you heard throughout the stuffed house of nearly 66,000 folks was silence, except for sobbing from players, coaches, fans and everybody else. Then another five minutes went by before the ambulance carried the motionless body of Hamlin to the University of Cincinnati hospital.

Nobody owning a heart or a brain thought anymore about what was suppose to take place on the field between two of the NFL’s best teams. Nobody but Goodell and his advisors, who still were trying to determine how to salvage a marquee game for their league that made a record $18 billion last season.

There is no way any of this should have happened, but if you believed the ESPN announcers during the Monday Night Football broadcast, it got worse as the ambulance rushed to the emergency room of the hospital after Hamlin needed his heartbeat restored on the field after suffering cardiac arrest. According to those announcers, the folks at NFL headquarters in New York (you know, Goodell and his advisors) had the referees huddle with Zac Taylor of the Bengals and Sean McDermott of the Bills to tell both head coaches to take their teams back to their locker rooms and prepare them to resume play in five minutes.

Five minutes?

There is no way, and NFL head of football operations Troy Vincent later denied those reports, but there still was this: From the time Hamlin tackled Higgins with six minutes left in the first quarter (and then stood up before crashing backward onto the field) to the moment word came through the media that Goodell finally decided to postpone the game, 65 minutes had passed.

Sixty five!

Actually, the NFL’s official announcement came at 10:05 p.m., and since Hamlin collapsed at 8:55 p.m. with the Bengals leading 7-3, that means Goodell waited 70 minutes before deciding to do the right thing.

Seventy minutes!

Which begs the question: Is Goodell ignorant of history? Not so much about the year William The Conqueror defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings, but about the guy considered the NFL’s greatest commissioner? It was Pete Rozelle, the public relations expert turned NFL czar for nearly three decades through 1989. Despite his penchant for pitch-perfect decisions, he damaged his legacy forever three days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963.

While the rival American Football League canceled its games that Sunday — along with most major college football teams, along with the overwhelming majority of entities throughout the country and the solar system — Rozelle kept NFL games alive and well. He said later it ranked among the worst decisions of his life, because it was, since it showed he and his league valued making a few bucks over just about everything else you could name.

Then along came Goodell as NFL commissioner in August 2006 after Paul Tagliabue followed Rozelle. This is the same Goodell who told league owners in 2010 that he expected the NFL to earn $25 billion in yearly revenue by 2027. He didn’t say “by any means necessary,” but consider the following: Even though he’ll admit he and the league were wrong about something, he’ll usually wait awhile.

Like for another profit boom for his league.

• In 2014, the NFL had a slew of players involved in domestic violence situations, including Ray Rice, a productive (as in money) running back for the Baltimore Ravens. He was caught on a hotel elevator video knocking out his fiancee with a punch before dragging her out the door. After months of silence, Goodell finally said, “Unfortunately, over the past several weeks, we have seen all too much of the NFL doing wrong. That starts with me.”
• In the summer of 2020 — which was four years after the NFL joined others in bashing San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem to protest social injustice — Goodell joined the George Floyd revolution (PR for the league, as in money). He said during a video released by the NFL, “We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter.”
• Earlier this year, a federal judge approved the NFL’s plan to include Black retired football players who were excluded (as in trying to save money) from the league’s $1 billion concussion settlement. The NFL used “race-norming” to deny those players since the practice contends Black people have a lower cognitive baseline score to disguise their mental decline. Long after the NFL was nailed for the tactic (which was nearly five years after the concussion lawsuit was settled), Goodell said, ‘Yes, it should be changed if there are better processes.”

Which begs another question: Will Goodell admit the NFL blew this Bengals-Bills thing (which was about money) during this century or the next one?