ESPN’s Joe Buck said on the air that the NFL told the Bills and Bengals were being given five minutes to warm up after Buffalo’s Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest, had CPR and left the field in an ambulance for the hospital on Monday night.
The NFL wants you to believe that Buck’s report came out of thin air.
This has led to a back-and-forth between the league and one of its most important network partners.
Buck told The Post he relayed the information from ESPN’s rules analyst, John Parry, who was in direct communication with the league. Buck’s network backed his story of the events.
“There was constant communication in real time between ESPN and league and game officials,” ESPN said in a statement. “As a result of that, we reported what we were told at 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.”
ESPN was responding to NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent, who, during a conference call, implied ESPN just came up with the timeline on its own.
Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest during “Monday Night Football” against the Bengals. Follow the New York Post’s live coverage for injury updates on his condition.
“I’m not sure where that came from,” Vincent said. “Frankly, there was no time period for the players to get warmed up. Frankly, 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 was best. So I’m not sure where that came from. Five-minute warmup never crossed my mind, personally. And I was the one…that was communicating with the commissioner. We never, frankly, it never crossed our mind to talk about warming up to resume play. That’s ridiculous. That’s insensitive. And that’s not a place that we should ever be in.”
After Buck made the statement about the potential resume, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was shown warming up. Soon after the Bengals coach Zac Taylor walked across the field to speak with his counterpart, Buffalo’s Sean McDermott. The game was then suspended and eventually postponed.
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