After a Week of Prayer, the Bills’ Return to the Field Defied Belief

How a priest who deals in moments bordering on the miraculous tries to explain what is happening to Damar Hamlin and what happened Sunday: ‘You can’t make this stuff up.’

On Wednesday, at a school mass for the students of St. Mark in Buffalo, Father Dave Richards prepared for the Prayers of the Faithful.

In a Catholic Mass, it is a time for the congregation to collectively offer up their intentions of strength, perseverance, comfort and love. They lift up their hearts in prayer to those in need of housing, to the poor and the sick. They ask for their leaders to see the job ahead clearly. They offer prayers to families, parents and children. They remember those who have come and gone.

It made sense only in that moment to add in the one person who had been on the mind of everyone in Buffalo over the course of the past 48 hours.

We lift up Damar Hamlin.

The Bills celebrate after Hines's second kickoff return touchdown against the Patriots :: Mark Konezny/USA TODAY Sports

Richards’s schedule is relentless. On Sunday, he jetted from a new 9 a.m. service (and the delayed performance of their Christmas pageant, which was canceled by a punishing blizzard) to a 10:30 Mass. Due to a shortage of priests, he covers St. Mark, St. Rose of Lima, St. Margaret, Holy Spirit, Assumption Black Rock and All Saints. His heart was full, having seen at least 75% of the pews filled with parishioners.

This kind of schedule puts him face to face with the fragility of life so often. It is so much of his job to counsel the families that come to him with stories of how their lives have completely and irreversibly changed over the course of a few short seconds. It is his job to provide some semblance of stability and assurance during the times when little makes sense.

He describes a beauty in prayer, be it during church or otherwise. One of the greatest experiences of his life was his own ordination, when he felt the well-wishes of thousands praying over him, and the support of all the Saints.

So it was a unique position he found himself in as a Bills fan watching Hamlin being administered CPR, watching as the world channeled its uncertainty. Some people left memorials or posted on social media. More people donated money.

But many also prayed, which brought the moment to him. Pray for Damar was plastered on digital billboards along major highways in the area, as commonplace as the gray western New York skies. It was anywhere you looked at the stadium in Orchard Park through the week and into Sunday. It was on T-shirts, at tailgates across the country, on the backs of players warming up in other NFL games, on the logos of each team’s social media account. It was in hashtags under ads for homemade No. 3 cookies being sold at the local Spot Coffee in Hamburg. It was on the lips of Bills teammates as they gathered at Josh Allen’s house.

It didn’t even have to be religious in nature for anyone to get it. For anyone to feel what the priest or the teammate or the fan or the trainer or the coach felt in that moment. That’s what made the past week in Buffalo so difficult, but ultimately so incredible. So many prayed in some way Monday night into Tuesday, on to Wednesday and Thursday. Everyone felt the lift of each update, how Hamlin began to move in his hospital bed, how his father told the players Hamlin would want them out there on the field, or how he asked, in his first moments of consciousness, whether the Bills had beaten the Bengals that night.

By Sunday, after a 35–23 win over the Patriots at home, Hamlin was virtually piped into the postgame locker room and broke down the team’s huddle.

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The Bills had to play a football game Sunday, which was out of their control. Three days beforehand, they spoke to the media for the first time about how they would see the moment in their heads forever, when a teammate fell to the turf and left the stadium uncertain whether he would live or die.

Inside 1 Bills Dr., they said, there were discussions about moments of doubt and weakness. There were discussions about mental health, about loving one another, about what they should do and how they would go on.

Coach Sean McDermott had a small piece of paper in front of him as he addressed reporters Thursday, not wanting to forget anyone in this intricate and frantic process, which ultimately resulted in life, in an uplifted community and a group of players that conjured nonexistent fumes to not only play the football game against a division rival trying to force its way into the playoffs, but win the game decidedly. The last part is obviously the least consequential, but is the one way everyone watching, everyone praying, could have gauged their resilience.

McDermott thanked the first responders. The Bills’ medical team. The Bengals’ medical team. The doctors and nurses at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He thanked ownership and every player in that game, none of whom will go back to life as usual.

He closed that opening statement by saying: “The amount of faith, hope and love we saw on display over the last three days has been nothing short of amazing.”

So often, a player or a coach will credit someone or something beyond Earth for a performance, as if God has any stake in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, or would make the wind blow a certain way on the 13th hole at Augusta. So often, it will elicit some skeptical eye rolls.

On Sunday, through tired, cried-out eyes, the Bills absolutely demolished one of the best defensive game-planners in NFL history. Allen bombed touchdowns of 49 and 42 yards, holding his hands up in the air and pointing to the sky afterward. John Brown, who caught one of them, handed the ball to Denny Kellington, the trainer who saved Hamlin’s life with timely treatment Monday in Cincinnati. Dawson Knox, who caught another, pointed to the sky, held up the number three, then joined both of his hands together to form a heart over his chest.

All of these moments seemed so rehearsed, as if the players expected them to happen. As if they knew that none of the sleepless nights, none of the long moments when no one spoke, none of the nightmare thoughts of what might happen to them on a football field if they took their minds off the game for one split second would touch them once they walked onto the field to play for Hamlin.

Of course, it can all be explained away somewhat sensibly. There have always been moments throughout the history of sports when players traversed immense grief and suffering. When their body transcended illness, fatigue, broken bones or worse.

That doesn’t stop us from wondering how each and every time. Especially Sunday.

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Hines jumped into the stands to celebrate with fans after scoring on the opening kickoff :: JAMIE GERMANO/USA TODAY NETWORK

Father Richards made it back to the rectory just in time for kickoff against New England, when Nick Folk blasted the ball to the Buffalo 5-yard line. Nyheim Hines fielded the return, sprinted straight up the field before breaking to his right and darting toward the sideline. He broke a tackle, and as he reached top speed, it became so perfectly clear that no one had a path to stop him. Folk was too shallow. Mack Wilson was too winded. Matthew Slater was coming from too far away.

Hines jumped right into the stands, where people held their arms out wide as if they were catching a wobbling toddler learning to walk.

One person behind the Bills’ bench said they saw Allen, seated, tearing up at that very moment, and tried to stop themselves from crying, too.

One person in the stands said it was like watching a movie play out before their eyes.

Of course it can all be explained away. Even though Bill Belichick is a special teams mastermind, he could give up a return or two. Even though the kickoff return touchdown, one of the most exciting plays in football, has all but phased its way out of modern football, we’ll still get one every now and then. Even though the Bills were completely and wholly exhausted, having to process every stage of grief and fear faster than an express train, they had enough juice left in them to break one loose.

These are matters of blocking and tackling; of angles and velocity.

Right?

Or, maybe in moments we care not to explain, we can just take the words of those who deal in moments that border on miraculous.

Hamlin tweeted from his hospital bed: OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And Richards said: “You can’t make this stuff up.”