Bills safety Damar Hamlin has earned a starting job in Buffalo‘s secondary.
Hamlin is listed as one of the two starting safeties on the Bills’ official depth chart, and when reporters asked head coach Sean McDermott about Hamlin’s status, he praised what Hamlin has done in the year and a half since he went into cardiac arrest on the field in a game in Cincinnati.
“Damar Hamlin will start,” McDermott said. “What else can’t this young man do? He went through what he went through on the field, you guys have written about that over and over, and to come back from that — it’s one thing to come back from an ACL or a broken bone. It’s another thing to come back off what he came back off. Let alone to decide to play football, and contact football, in full pads at the NFL level — I don’t think I need to say anything more. It’s incredible.”
Hamlin was widely praised last season for being able to return to the field at all, but last year he only played in five games, mostly on special teams, and was never in the starting lineup. This offseason Hamlin has drawn praise for his continued hard work, and now he is a starter.