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On Sports: Dream for Steelers fan Damar Hamlin is to finish career with hometown team | TribLIVE.com
Steelers/NFL

On Sports: Dream for Steelers fan Damar Hamlin is to finish career with hometown team

Chris Adamski
Chris Adamski
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AP
Buffalo Bills safety and former Pitt standout Damar Hamlin acknowledges fans while attending Saturday night’s basketball game between Pitt and Virginia Tech at Petersen Events Center.

This is not the first time that On Sports was call-ed upon to provide a wrap-up of the day’s sports news when “Breakfast With Benz” has had the day off.

They do need a safety …

Damar Hamlin is no stranger to playing high-level football in Pittsburgh.

He’s won WPIAL championships with Central Catholic and in an ACC championship game while at Pitt. He’s even played at Acrisure Stadium as an NFL player.

It would seem that suiting up for the Pittsburgh Steelers is his final hometown football frontier. Could it happen? Hamlin, on some level, allowed that he hopes so.

Speaking in a question-and-answer format with fans during an appearance at Steel City Collectibles in White Oak on Saturday, Hamlin said retiring as a Steeler would be “a dream come true.”

“I think ending my career, finishing, as a Pittsburgh Steeler would be a dream moreso than playing there (to begin his pro career) because I played at Pitt,” Hamlin said, per videos posted on X of his appearance. “So… I played at Heinz Field probably like eight years straight (between) WPIAL championships and then Pitt, so a dream come true would be finishing my career as a Steeler.”

Hamlin, a safety by trade, has spent three NFL seasons with the Buffalo Bills since being acquired in the sixth round of the 2021 draft. Though he was a starter during the 2022 season, last year Hamlin was frequently a healthy inactive. He appeared in only five regular-season games, limited to 17 defensive snaps and 94 snaps on special teams.

Hamlin, of course, caught the attention of the football nation when he suffered cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2, 2023 game in Cincinnati. His full recovery turned him into an NFL celebrity, and his charitable foundation exploded in popularity. Hamlin has worked to help equip public places with automated external defibrillator machines and train people in CPR.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has repeatedly expressed his fondness for Hamlin, who he got to know both as one of the area’s premier high school players and while he was at Pitt.

Hamlin is entering the final year of his rookie contract signed with the Bills.

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AP
Steelers head coach Michael Tomlin (left) greets Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (right) before a preseason game in Pittsburgh on Aug. 19.

While fielding questions Saturday, Hamlin expressed his love for the Steelers growing up when he said Troy Polamalu was among the players whose playing cards he most enjoyed collecting.

“I wanted the whole Steelers roster, from Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, to Big Ben (Roethlisberger), Hines Ward, (Antwaan) Randle El,” Hamlin said. “I am a big Steelers fan.”

Cam calls out haters

Now that he’s won the coveted Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award, Steelers co-captain Cameron Heyward has turned his attention back to his play on the field.

Heyward, who will be 35 in May and is set to enter his 14th season, has repeatedly pushed back on ideas that he might retire or should take a paycut if he does. Over the weekend, Heyward had some spicy social-media posts regarding his career going forward.

It began Friday afternoon with a message that seemed to suggest Steelers fans wish Heyward to retire in an apparent effort to create salary-cap space: “The couch GM’s are out!!! If they have it their way our retire and we will have 15 different QBs. Man you gotta love Steeler fans for the passion.”

The “our” presumably was intended to be an “I would” or “I’ll,” and can perhaps be attributed to a talk-to-text mishap. Regardless, Heyward doesn’t seem to like the talk that he is slowing after a season in which he had just two sacks in 11 games while dealing with a groin injury.

Five-and-a-half hours after Heyward’s initial post came his most snarky message: “Funny how you get hurt and kill yourself just to get back to play and not be 100 percent. Now they want you to retire cuz I was hurt all year (three shrugging emojis). Atleast I know where y’all stand. Yall quick to forget when I am healthy…. But I look forward to reminding yall”

By the next morning, Heyward’s saltiness seemed to be melting away. Or maybe he wanted to offer a quasi-apology to the fans when he wrote: “Use it all for fuel man. I honestly love it! I let my mind find the dumbest things to just push me forward. #97motivation”

Heyward is due $16 million in salary this season, the final year of his contract. Heyward’s salary-cap hit is scheduled for $22.4 million, and the Steelers would absorb a “dead money” hit of $6.4 million if they released Heyward (or if he is traded or retires).

While the team could ask Heyward to take a pay cut, a more likely route is a restructuring of the contract that pays Heyward the same money in 2024 while lessening the cap hit for this season.

Crawford comes through

It would have taken something quite special to potentially upstage Patrick Kane’s return to Chicago on a day the three-time Stanley Cup champion with the Blackhawks scored the overtime winner in his first game back in the city. But a supermodel acing a shot from center ice into a small cut-out slot of a goal? That might qualify.

Cindy Crawford, a Chicago-area native who briefly attended Northwestern University, buried a well-struck shot from 89 feet away at the center-ice dot.

If only Erik Karlsson was as accurate getting pucks on net from the point during Penguins’ power plays this season.

New NHL heavyweight

Matt Rempe made his NHL debut with the New York Rangers eight days ago. Officially, Rempe’s career hadn’t even started yet — the clock hadn’t run with him on the ice — and the the 6-foot-7, 241-pound forward already had a fighting major. It was a sign of things to come.

Five games into Rempe’s NHL career, he has more penalty minutes (32) than time played on the ice (20 minutes, 1 second).

Rempe’s latest fight came during his first shift of Sunday’s loss at the Columbus Blue Jackets when he squared off against Mathieu Olivier.

The bout with Olivier was Rempe’s second in a span of about 27 hours. Earlier in the first period of Saturday’s game in Philadelphia, he tangled with Flyers’ tough guy Nicolas Deslauriers.

For context on Kempe’s three fights, consider that the Penguins — as a team — have been involved in five fights in 55 games this season. No Penguins player has been given a fighting major yet during calendar year 2024.

Kempe has fought during three of his five NHL games to date. In a fourth, he was ejected 13 seconds after entering play for a hit on the New Jersey Devils’ Nathan Bastian this past Thursday.

Long live King

Next year’s Super Bowl might or might not feature the Kansas City Chiefs for the fifth time in six seasons. But it apparently will not have Peter King on hand for the first time in four decades.

The longtime NFL reporter announced his retirement in a characteristically-lengthy piece written for NBC Sports published Monday morning. King, 66, said he has covered each of the past 40 Super Bowls. The vast majority of those were for Sports Illustrated, though in recent years King has worked for NBC.

“I’m retiring*,” King’s piece read. “I use an asterisk because I truly don’t know what the future holds for me. I probably will work at something, but as I write this I have no idea what it will be. Maybe it will be something in the media world, but just not Football Morning in America (Monday Morning Quarterback).”

The latter two references were the titles of his weekly NFL column that he says has averaged 10,500 words and covered myriad topics across the league.

Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.

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Categories: Sports | Steelers/NFL
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