Tim Benz: Throwing shade at NFL nothing but poorly directed attempts to invent blame for Damar Hamlin's collapse

Maybe we just had too hard of a time processing what we had seen when Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during this week’s “Monday Night Football” game.

It was inexplicable. It was unprecedented. It was jarring.

Acknowledging that we may have been scared by what we saw may be difficult to do. Being sad for Hamlin and his teammates hurts.

However, finding someone to blame? Well, that’s easy to do. Let’s make it someone’s fault. Those emotions are easy to channel. Especially when the potential target is the big, bad, mean, unfeeling, monolithic, faceless, multibillion-dollar, hobgoblin NFL.

That seemed to be the goal of many fans and media members on Twitter in the moments — and now days — since Hamlin (Pitt/Central Catholic) suffered his medical event in Cincinnati.

Many on social media were assaulting the NFL for failing to cancel the game in a more timely fashion.

Timely, of course, from their perspectives. On their couches. In their living rooms as opposed to being responsible for this situation which was being broadcast to tens of millions of people. And, to a certain degree, responsible for this player’s life which was hanging in the balance.

Which is why it was stupid for many to send screeching, judgmental tweets about why it took so long for the NFL to officially cancel the game. In some cases, while Hamlin was still being treated on the field.

Via a timeline broadcast by ESPN, Hamlin collapsed at 8:55 p.m. The game wasn’t officially postponed until 10:01 p.m. And, yes, that 66-minute window probably felt much longer because of the nature of what we were all watching.

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But be smart. The NFL was at least trying to be.

The first 30 minutes of that swath of time was occupied by diagnosing and treating Hamlin on the field. The ambulance didn’t pull away until 9:25 p.m. It would’ve been dangerous to cancel a game with 70,000 people in the stadium and fill the surrounding area with pedestrians and cars that might make it harder for the ambulance to get to the hospital.

By the way, there was a report that the ambulance waited an additional five to seven minutes so that Hamlin’s mother could get out of the stands and go to the hospital with her son. Assuming no one wanted to even think about what to do about the game until the ambulance left, that takes the clock down to roughly 30 minutes before 10:01.

During that time, the on-field officials and coaches were seen speaking. Before long, the field was cleared. Which takes a fair amount of time to get two full rosters off the turf and into the locker rooms.

Video emerged during that lag time of the two coaches huddling around multiple NFL officials including NFL chief football administrative officer Dawn Aponte. They were passing a cell phone back and forth, presumably speaking to the league offices about what was going to be done.

Is the game postponed? Are they waiting to hear if Hamlin is going to survive? Are the Bills going to stay in Cincinnati and resume Tuesday if they find out Hamlin is going to be OK? Are they just going to stay for him anyway? Is it a postponement, a cancellation, a tie, a forfeit? What do we tell the owners? Or the players, the network, the NFLPA?

It takes longer to do that stuff than fire off a rage tweet from a few thousand miles away with your phone in one hand and a beer in the other.

Plus, by the time that video was shot and spun around to air, there was only a matter of 10 to 15 minutes between when we saw it and the game was officially scrapped.

So we made a federal case over a 10- to 15-minute gap between when we were told and after the players already knew? Was that worth it? With a man’s life in the balance as the backdrop?

What people really seized on was the “Monday Night Football” broadcast crew saying — after the ambulance pulled away — that the teams were given five minutes to warm up and then play would resume.

Joe Buck stated it on-air as fact four separate times so figuring out who is lying should be pretty straightforward. https://t.co/2GWQMGcsFn pic.twitter.com/RIphQ7zWLB

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 3, 2023

During a briefing late that night, NFL executive Troy Vincent denied that happened. Some in the media just wouldn’t allow themselves to believe that.

I can understand why. The NFL hasn’t exactly bathed itself in glory when it comes to transparency over the past few … decades. But this was a slowly evolving story developing out of an incredibly rapid sequence of events from Monday night. Maybe some temperance and patience before online condemnation would’ve been wise?

The NFL tried to spin what happened on Monday Night Football when Damar Hamlin went down after a tackle. But this new failure of leadership echoed every time the league has failed and players and coaches have had to point the way. @MikeSilverhttps://t.co/ryVKtvuz7F

— Sporting Green (@SportingGreenSF) January 4, 2023

On Wednesday, Bengals coach Zac Taylor corroborated the NFL’s story.

“I didn’t feel any directive that guys need to start warming up,” Taylor said, adding that the initial motivation after the ambulance pulled away was to give the Bills time and space to collect their thoughts and emotions over what had happened to their fallen teammate.

Zac Taylor was asked about players warming up, and if there was a "five-minute warmup period."

"I didn’t feel any directive that guys need to start warming up."

Here's his full answer. pic.twitter.com/nK7YXJTnSw

— Charlie Goldsmith (@CharlieG__) January 4, 2023

“It was … let’s particularly give Buffalo space to process as a team,” Taylor said

Bengals QB Joe Burrow, who was seen getting his arm loose during these moments, claimed there was never a clear message that plans to resume were underway.

“We really didn’t know what was going on,” Burrow said. “People saying we were going to play again. There was a lot of stuff going around. It was a lot of chaos. A lot of people saying a lot of different things.”

On Thursday, Bills coach Sean McDermott went step by step through the span of time between when the ambulance left the field and when the game was canceled. He never mentioned anything about a five-minute window. In fact, McDermott went so far as to say, “The league helped in this way, it’s OK to go back to your locker rooms.”

Not only that but McDermott heaped praise on referee Shawn Smith and his staff, Vincent, Aponte and even Commissioner Roger Goodell — who has been noticeably absent from most of the public dialogue surrounding this situation.

Would he have done that if he felt the league was applying pressure to him or his players at the worst of times?

Predictably, on Thursday, NFLPA president J.C. Tretter issued a mealy-mouthed complaint about the cancellation of the game taking too long because the league got too pedantic about getting feedback from all corners before making a call and bagging the game.

Of course, if the game got canceled without the union being consulted, Tretter would’ve been apoplectic and complained about that instead.

Not surprising. That’s the main function of union reps. Just to complain about anything management does, no matter what the circumstances. Their job is simply to say management did the wrong thing. Always.

But here’s a question that needs to be posed. Between both teams, there were probably over 100 players (inactive or in uniform) on that field Monday night. If the NFL really tried to coerce the players into resuming the game and the players were not ready or willing to do so, don’t you think one of them … even just one … would’ve put that message out on social media?

If that happened, I never saw it.

ESPN has stood by how it relayed its information. Play-by-play man Joe Buck told the New York Post the details he gave the audience “came from ESPN’s rules expert John Parry, who was in direct communication with the league.”

Well, maybe something got lost in the game of telephone-tree because so far no one in the decision-making process is saying that the league ordered the teams to get ready to play.

As Bills sideline reporter Sal Capaccio told me on 105.9 The X Wednesday, it looked to him that players were getting ready for the game to go on because, well, in the history of the NFL, the game had always gone on. They were, ostensibly, getting ready to play again out of habit.

The league is the easiest target in the world. The NFL has been far from transparent in how it has handled numerous different controversies. Deflategate. Spygate. Concussions. Ray Rice. I completely understand why people were dubious of Vincent’s initial denial.

I was too. I’m not one who often likes to cut the league a break. But that’s why you wait for the whole story to unfold and you wait for the people involved to actually make their statements before castigating whoever is conveniently deemed to be the bad guy so the social media mob can pass time throwing balls at the dunk tank.

Why let facts, first-person accounts and personal tragedy get in the way when you can fire off some hot-take shame tweets at the NFL, right? Someone has to pay for this one-in-a-billion, horrible fluke occurrence, and I guess it has to be the NFL.

Strange, though, isn’t it? For as much caterwauling as there was over the alleged “five-minute warmup” window, I didn’t see many mea culpa columns or admissions of getting it wrong from some of the rock throwers on Twitter after Taylor and McDermott spoke.

Hmm. Weird. Twitter is usually such a bastion of transparency, honesty and genuine self-reflection.

No. Instead it was, “Let’s pretend we never heard Zac Taylor and just go after Bart Scott for some of the moronic things he said about Tee Higgins!”

Ok, actually, that I support. What Scott said was insane.

Look I get it. The NFL has a lousy track record when it comes to honesty. Twitter is seen as the online town square to call out those in power. Journalists see themselves as the conduit to truth when it’s being obscured.

It’s just generally a good idea to actually know the truth before you start telling your own preferred, agenda-driven version of it.