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Sean McDermott says that every year he tells his players their health and safety comes before winning, and says the moment Damar Hamlin collapsed he had already decided he would not coach the rest of the game because he had to live up to that message “That was a unique night and one that I hope I never experience again. First of all, I’m thankful that Damar is doing well, thriving and playing football again, but more importantly, healthy and with us, because that was certainly a scary event and one that, as a coach, you never think you’re going to experience when you sign up for a job.” “What I really tried to execute that night was following through on what I pretty much start every season with in our first team meeting, communicating to the players that their health and safety is number one, above, believe it or not, winning games.” “So when Damar went down that night, you could tell pretty early that something wasn’t like a normal injury. Something was different. I could see a little bit of what was going on with Damar, but I could also see the way our trainers were reacting once they understood what was happening. They knew more at that point than I did, but I just knew something wasn’t right.” “There’s no playbook for it. How are you going to handle what’s unfolding on the field? How are you going to handle returning to play? How are you going to handle the next few days or the next week?” “I take a lot of notes. I did a lot of preparation over the years leading into becoming a head coach. But at that point, I just said, ‘If this is who you say you are, then there is no way that you can coach this game.’” “So whether that game was going to go on or not, Sean McDermott was not going to coach that game the rest of the night because of who I said that I was and what I was about. That’s the follow-through to me on leadership.” “It just so happened that both teams and the NFL decided not to play. Brandon Beane, our general manager, Terry Pegula, our owner, one of our training staff members and I went over to the hospital and spent some time with Damar’s parents. Then we returned to the team plane, and I got on the intercom and gave the team an update on what we knew at that point.” “Every day after that, leading into the next week’s game, we tried to get an update, and I would communicate that to our team. At one point, we were able to FaceTime Damar from his hospital room. You can imagine the emotion in the room that morning.”