After an Emotional Week, N.F.L. Players Return to the Field

LAS VEGAS — N.F.L. gamers are sometimes sanguine about dealing with the violence and critical accidents inherent to their sport. They’ve seen all of it — or at the least they thought that they had till they witnessed medical personnel compressing Buffalo Payments security Damar Hamlin’s chest Monday evening when he went into cardiac arrest after making what seemed to be a routine deal with.

“I’ve by no means seen one thing the place somebody had been getting CPR and stuff like that on the sphere,” Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas Metropolis quarterback, instructed reporters Wednesday. “I don’t know if any of us have seen it. It hadn’t occurred in such a very long time, and also you don’t take into consideration that stuff if you’re stepping on the sphere.”

Requested whether or not Kansas Metropolis ought to even be taking part in this weekend, Mahomes hesitated.

“It’s exhausting for me to say,” he mentioned. “It’s not one thing that I can management both manner.”

Prepared or not, N.F.L. gamers will return to the sphere to shut an emotional week that started with Hamlin’s life in jeopardy and ended with him nonetheless hospitalized however a lot improved and in a position to converse after his respiratory tube was eliminated. Mahomes will probably be one of many first N.F.L. gamers to step onto the sphere since Hamlin’s collapse when Kansas Metropolis takes on the Las Vegas Raiders Saturday afternoon.

N.F.L. gamers are specialists at blocking out distractions — household, the gang, lingering accidents — and specializing in the duty at hand. However even they could not have the ability to escape the sensation that one thing is totally different.

“It’ll most likely be behind folks’s minds,” Raiders quarterback Jarrett Stidham mentioned.

Hamlin, 24, collapsed after he tackled Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins within the first quarter of a sport proven on ESPN’s “Monday Evening Soccer.”

For greater than 10 minutes, medical professionals gave Hamlin lifesaving care as an ambulance backed onto the sphere and Payments gamers knelt in a circle round him. Gamers on each the Payments and Bengals wept and hugged one another earlier than the sport was postponed.

That terrifying scene, just some days in the past, appeared a distant reminiscence on Friday afternoon as a whole lot of Kansas Metropolis followers — bedecked in purple and shopping for drinks with team-branded bank cards — packed onto each out there airplane and flew west for what was alleged to be, and possibly nonetheless will probably be, a typical Vegas weekend of enjoyable.

With tickets already purchased and resort rooms reserved, they saved their plans. However the sport they’re attending will possible tackle much less of a celebratory aura, at the least at first.

There will probably be quite a lot of tributes to Hamlin in any respect N.F.L. video games this weekend. There will probably be a “pregame second of assist” for him, his No. 3 will probably be outlined in Payments colours on every 30-yard line, and gamers will put on pregame shirts and patches honoring him.

Hamlin will even be current in much less apparent methods, when gamers are prone to take a number of additional seconds throughout their pregame prayers earlier than they step onto the sphere.

However then, maybe, it will likely be again to enterprise as typical. “It’s Raiders, and it’s Chiefs,” mentioned Kansas Metropolis Coach Andy Reid. “It doesn’t get any higher than that, so we’re wanting ahead to going on the market and taking part in them.”

Any tentativeness should be short-lived, as the sport has essential penalties for Kansas Metropolis. At 13-3, the crew has one of the best report within the A.F.C. and hopes to clinch a bye within the first spherical of the playoffs. With the N.F.L. opting to not resume the Bengals-Payments sport that was postponed Monday evening after Hamlin’s collapse, Kansas Metropolis would clinch a first-round bye if it beats the Raiders or the Payments lose to the Patriots Sunday afternoon.

The primary seed wouldn’t essentially assure Kansas Metropolis home-field benefit all through the playoffs, nonetheless. To compensate for the Payments and Bengals ending the common season having performed one fewer sport than the opposite groups, there are eventualities during which Kansas Metropolis might play both the Payments or the Bengals within the A.F.C. championship sport at a impartial web site to be decided later.

At 6-10, the Raiders are taking part in just for satisfaction.