Buffalo Bills players and staff are still processing what they saw Monday night when safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field mid-game against the Cincinnati Bengals, according to a source inside the team.
The Bills only landed in Buffalo at 3:30 a.m. ET Tuesday after seeing their teammate having to restore his heartbeat on the field.
“Everyone is exhausted,” the source told CNN.
Add to that a number of difficult situations the team is facing, including the mass shooting that killed 10 people and injured three at a Buffalo grocery store in May, and the deaths of at least 39 people in Erie County, New York had due to the Buffalo Blizzard moved its home game to Detroit in November and got stuck in Chicago during the holiday season, the source said.
As for Hamlin, the Bills are in “wait and see mode” including the team’s medical staff, the source said.
The Bills have not discussed specific ways to help the family during this time as they hope for recovery, the source said.
The team is still determining how it will handle its typical weekly media availability.
From now on it is a daily determination. “We’ll see how big the appetite for a speech could be,” added the source.