Thirty years later, as Hamlin lay stricken, it was a powerfully jarring moment to witness for players from that 1992 Jets team.
It was there for all the world to see Monday night: Damar Hamlin colliding with Tee Higgins, getting up from what appeared to be a routine tackle, then frighteningly falling backwards onto the turf at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, in cardiac arrest.
Quarterback Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills react as Damar Hamlin is tended to on the field after a collision in the first quarter against the Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium.Jeff Lageman, a former Jets defensive end and close friend of Byrd’s, was watching the Bills-Bengals game on TV with his wife.
Cal Dixon was a rookie center on that 1992 Jets team who’d grown close to Byrd, whom he called a mentor. The Hamlin family, as well as Bills quarterback Josh Allen, were quick to publicly support the unfairly maligned Higgins, just as the 1992 Jets were quick to protect Mersereau. New York Jets defensive end Dennis Byrd, paralyzed in a collision with a teammate the season before, walks to his place at a New York news conference Feb. 11, 1993 with the aid of a crutch.“When something that traumatic happens, you start to look around,’’ Mersereau said. “We all thought we’re invincible at that age, like we had a suit of armor on.
“I’ll never forget what [head coach] Bruce Coslet said talking to the team. All Bruce said was, ‘Do your best.’ And he said it with this conviction and volume that, phew, it shot us out of a cannon. It was one of the most intense moments I’ve ever been involved in … and I wasn’t even playing.” “Leon Hess came into that locker room pregame, and he brought us all together and he said, ‘Everybody, I want you to know that Dennis Byrd and his family will be taken care of. We love Dennis. We are praying for him,’ ” Frase recalled. “That was literally like a sigh of relief. And I went out that day and I played with reckless abandon, like we’re taught. That talk from Leon Hess was kind of like a release.
Buffalo Bills’ Siran Neal and Nyheim Hines react after teammate Damar Hamlin was injured during the first half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals.Washington: “It’s not gonna be normal for the Bills. It’s not. These are young men that have never had a real medical issue come in to penetrate their sports bubble. This is a life-and-death situation.’’
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