On Toucher & Rich, Ted Johnson shares what was going through his mind during the Damar Hamlin emergency on Monday Night Football.

• Rich Shertenlieb: As a player who obviously can you know, who’s been around injury, has suffered from injuries, who has seen his friends go down, taken off in ambulances. What was going through your mind when you saw this?

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• Ted Johnson: It was a feeling I’ve never felt before because it was something I’ve never seen before. I would say during my career, what we knew was the possibility was, you know, your knees get jacked up. You’re you could be paralyzed. The game you seen Dennis Byrd be paralyzed. You heard of guys being paralyzed. Those were the kind of the things that you knew. The CTE head trauma didn’t come until at the end of my career So that was another layer of, you know, potentially brain damage long term that into the equation as far as what risk you could protect usually have by playing football.

  You’ve heard of heat stroke, right? Korey Stringer died from from heat stroke, ill guys who have had heart attacks that have, you know, long after they’re done playing football guys died from heart disease, guys after football.

  To see a player potentially lose his life on the football field and I’ll be honest, I was at the gym when when this came down and I got my phone kind of started blowing up. And and so I was listening it. And then I listened to a lot of the coverage on the way home. And I got home and watched it. And it it was it it was hard to see. It was really hard to see.

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  The Buffalo Bills gather as an ambulance parks on the field while CPR is administered to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) after a play in the first quarter of the NFL Week 17 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills at Paycor Stadium in Downtown Cincinnati on Monday, Jan. 2, 2023. The game was suspended with suspended in the first quarter after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin (3) was taken away in an ambulance following a play.
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• Ted Johnson: Football players. There’s this part of what makes you be able to play such a violent game is this idea that you’re prepared, you’re physically, mentally, you’re just tougher than everybody else. But then when that happens, you lose that cloak of invincibility. There are guys are going to be shaken from this because, you know it’s just it’s you’ve never seen anything like this.

   

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• Ted Johnson: I’ll be honest, when I heard initially the report was a heart attack, I thought in my brain without seeing the play until I got home, ‘oh, boy. did did did he have a preexisting heart condition that no one saw? Why was he may be out there?’ No, no, no, no, no. He had a heart issue because of a hit he delivered playing football within the rules. that play that happened it it happened on was like any other play in football. You see it all the time.

  Ted Johnson: This is just a reminder, no matter what the rules are, how you twist or how you try and make it safer and package it up so that everybody feels good about the game, there’s still no denying the fact that it is truly an inherently a very dangerous game.

• LISTEN HERE:

• Nick Gemelli is a Producer for the Toucher and Rich program and contributor for 985thesportshub.com. you can follow Nick at @NickGemelli on Twitter.

  Follow @Toucherandrich on Twitter, @Toucherandrichofficial and @fredtoucher on Instagram to keep up with the show!

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Buffalo Bills,Cincinnati Bengals,Fred Toucher,jon wallach,rich shertenlieb,Ted Johnson