After Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during Monday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals, a flood of memories came rushing back for Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus.
Butkus was on the field during an Oct. 1971 game against the Detroit Lions when wide receiver Chuck Hughes collapsed during the fourth quarter.
He was later pronounced dead, and to date remains the only person to die on the field during an NFL game.
The sight of Hughes lying on the ground is one that has stuck with Butkus to this day.
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“He was coming back after an incomplete pass, and I couldn’t believe it, the color that he had. He just dropped,” he said. “Back then, the teams were on the same sideline, and we happened to be the closest bench, and I waved on Dr. Fox. I knew he was in trouble.”
Hughes was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The game was allowed to resume after he was taken away.
“There wasn’t any talk (of canceling the game),” he said. “We were all waiting, and they were taking him off the field, and we certainly did not know what was going on. Then we found out that he died.”
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After Hamlin collapsed, with trainers performing CPR as he was transported in an ambulance, the teams went back to their locker rooms, and ultimately the decision was made to suspend the remainder of the contest.
Butkus said that the aftermath of the two incidents has been markedly different, with relatively scant coverage of Hughes’ death and extensive coverage of the incident involving Hamlin.
“It wasn’t like this thing. This thing, it just went across the country. Our game wasn’t on national TV, so there wasn’t really the impact as this has had,” he said.
Many positives have come out of the aftermath of Hamlin’s injury, with sign-ups rising for CPR classes, calls for additional medical equipment being made, and with millions raised for charity in his name.
Butkus praises all of that, and also says that he hopes athletes and fans alike will use this as a reminder to take care of their heart health, and never to take it for granted.
The legendary linebacker’s foundation operates the Butkus Takes Heart initiative, which encourages early cardiovascular screening and scans to help prevent some of the nearly 700,000 individuals who die of heart disease each year.
Butkus says that a routine screening helped doctors discover that he needed bypass surgery, and since then he has pushed hard for others to undergo similar screenings.
“I had a bypass 20 years ago, and I had no signs or whatever,” he said. “We’re getting really close to having a hospital in every NFL city that would be able to provide these scans to former players, and the public also. What this does, sad as it is, it makes you start thinking about the health of the players and of everyone. You’re not immune to having something happen to you, even if you’re a great athlete. If it happened to them, it can certainly happen to you.”
