ESPN said that it stands by its report that the NFL was planning to restart the Buffalo Bills–Cincinnati Bengals game after Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and suffered a cardiac arrest on Monday night.
After Hamlin’s collapse, ESPN reported during its “Monday Night Football” telecast that after Hamlin was taken off the field during the game’s first quarter, play would resume and that both teams were provided a 5-minute warm-up notice. The game was instead postponed, and the NFL issued a statement on Tuesday that it will not resume this week.
An NFL executive, meanwhile, said hours after the game that the league said it never considered resuming the game. After ESPN reported that play would be resumed, a number of fans and social media users expressed anger due to the severity of Hamlin’s condition. The Bills player remains hospitalized in critical condition as of Wednesday, family members said.
Vincent added that “ the only thing that we asked was that [referee] Shawn [Smith] communicate with both head coaches to make sure they had the proper time inside the locker room to discuss what they felt like was best ... so I’m not sure where that came from.” The “five-minute warmup never crossed my mind, personally. And I was the one . . . that was communicating with the [NFL] commissioner,” Vincent added.
“The two head coaches, you can see, got together. And they’ll have five minutes to warm up,” said Buck at one point. “As we said, they’ve been given five minutes to quote-unquote to get ready to go back to playing, that’s the word we get from the league and the word we get from down on the field but nobody’s moving,” he would say moments later.
“Then, when we got the update that within five minutes, these players were gonna start playing football again, we saw Zac Taylor live walk across the field to Sean McDermott,” Buck also said.
“There was constant communication in real time between ESPN and league and game officials,” the network said. “As a result of that, we reported what we were told in the moment and immediately updated fans as new information was learned. This was an unprecedented, rapidly evolving circumstance. All night long, we refrained from speculation.”
Meanwhile, Buck told the New York Times on Tuesday that the five-minute warm-up information was produced by Parry, who has “an open line of communication with the league office in New York.”
“It is our obligation to give the information we are provided by the NFL in real time as we get it,” Buck said. “That’s our job at that time. That’s all we can go with.”
Later, in a statement, the NFL confirmed the Bills–Bengals game was postponed. No further details were provided.
“The NFL has made no decision regarding the possible resumption of the game at a later date,” the league’s statement said. “The league has not made any changes to the Week 18 regular season schedule. We will continue to provide additional information as it becomes available.”
The Epoch Times has contacted the NFL for comment.