Stidham, Adams says player safety will be front of mind this weekend

On Monday, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest after tackling a Bengals receiver.

By Thursday, the Bills said Hamlin “has shown remarkable improvement over the past 24 hours.”

While the positive outlook is good, players will still have what happened in the back of their minds going into Week 18 games.

The first game to kick off this weekend sees the Las Vegas Raiders welcome the Kansas City Chiefs to Allegiant Stadium.

Raiders quarterback Jarrett Stidham said the situation is scary for anybody.

“It’ll probably be in the back of people’s minds, and everybody handles things differently,” Stidham said. “It’s something that’s just extremely scary that has happened. You just try to protect yourself as best you can. Football is a very physical sport, and it’s very sad what happened and like I said, very scary.”

“We’re just all really praying for him.”@tae15adams on Damar Hamlin 🖤 pic.twitter.com/NVxfNgXx8Z

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) January 4, 2023

Raiders receiver Davante Adams echoed those thoughts, adding it’s it tough to concentrate on playing football right now. It also helped, he said, that Wednesday’s team meetings started by talking about what happened and getting some answers about the situation.

“But just to have a couple answers, at least address the elephant in the room, is kind of a big deal right now,” Adams said. “It’s kind of insensitive I think if we were to just jump in here without talking about it and making sure everybody’s mind is clear and able to jump into that. So I appreciated the way that Josh [McDaniels] started off the day just kind of hitting on that real quick.”

One of the bright spots from Monday’s scary situation is seeing so many people donate to Hamlin’s charity. As of Thursday morning, Hamlin’s GoFundMe page has surpassed $7 million. Its original goal was $2,500.

Adams was among many NFL players, coaches or owners to donate. When asked about why, he said he doesn’t know Hamlin personally, so this was the next thing he could do to show people there are other ways to help.

“As of now, I don’t know him personally, so I can’t call his family, I can’t do all the things that I wish I could do. So, to be able to help with a charity or anything that can help – if nothing else to show other people that I did that, that way that will kind of encourage other people,” Adams said. “Because I saw Tom Brady, a couple other guys too and their families decide to make some donations. So when I see that, that kind of got me to jump on the boat as well. We’re just all really praying for him and hoping that he pulls through and everything is good and he’s okay altogether. Obviously, we’re hoping that he’s still here with us, but most importantly we just want to bring peace to him and his family as we move forward with this. Like I said, just a small donation, something that obviously can’t help with his health in the immediate, but just anything. The first thing that I felt like I could reach out and do I just tried to do it.”

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