‘Chills through my body’: Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes shaken by injury to Damar Hamlin

Patrick Mahomes stayed up late Monday, and during time typically reserved either for sleep or preparation for the Raiders this weekend, he instead scrolled through the Twitter app on his phone.

Over and over again.

The Chiefs quarterback’s thumb moved through the latest tweets section, hoping to find an update on Bills safety Damar Hamlin after Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest during Monday night’s game in Cincinnati. Hamlin, who required CPR from medical professionals before leaving the field via ambulance, remained in critical condition as of Wednesday.

Mahomes would describe “chills through my body” when watching a game that had seemed so important hours earlier — but had instantly become so meaningless instead.

As he spoke to the media Wednesday afternoon, above all else, one thing became clear:

That feeling hasn’t left.

“You get around your teammates, and you just tell them how much you appreciate them. You don’t do that enough,” Mahomes said. “As you get through this week, you still have that in the back of your head. I mean, I’m at practice, and it’s like the first thing I do when I get back in the building — you go look for updates.”

Mahomes spoke for more than six minutes in his weekly news conference, and the entirety of it encompassed his reaction to seeing Hamlin collapse on a football field that has provided Mahomes his livelihood.

For generations now, we have listened to NFL players talk of putting their lives on the line for the sport they love. Whatever that cliche meant decades earlier, though, it long ago transformed into something figurative.

As much as you might be informed this week that players have accepted their roles in a life-and-death game played inside a coliseum, that’s not been the message resonating with its gladiators.

Not literally, anyway.

Yes, there is an understanding of the risk inherent in participating in a sport that is, by design, violent. They know injuries, even of the season-ending variety and even head injuries, come with the territory.

For years, the most severe long-term effects have crystallized primarily in the game’s former players, with the repercussions of repetitious head collisions plotting a Hollywood movie. Perhaps some of the game’s current players hope to be the exception to those rules. Others almost certainly wrestle with what might await, albeit most of them quietly.

But what we witnessed Monday on our TVs is that there is no guarantee of time to wait. What was once quiet is now deafening. The danger is here and present before you know it — not simply present day, but the present player.

And in that vein, we are not the only ones who received that reminder.

The players themselves received it, too.

And that’s what makes this so different.

“You don’t think about that stuff when you’re stepping on the field,” Mahomes said. “You’re thinking, ‘How can I win this game? How can I do this and this?’

“It puts into perspective that when you go on that field, anything can happen.”

And ...

“It makes you think about how serious this sport really is,” offensive lineman Trey Smith said. “You sort of take that for granted. You think it’s just a game, but we’re all putting everything on the line.”

And ...

“There’s a presumed risk when you sign your name on the line to do this,” defensive tackle Khalen Saunders said. “But not that type of risk.

“To actually have to fight for your life on the field is a whole different dynamic.”

The Chiefs opened the doors to their locker room Wednesday for the first time since the collision that sent Hamlin to a Cincinnati hospital, where he remains. We strolled through those doors hoping to learn how such a terrifying event struck with those actually in the tight-knit fraternity of NFL players.

Turns out, same as it did with us.

The event Monday are enough to remind us of the personal nature within this sport. But the response inside these walls is, too.

It was terrifying for them to watch, same as it was for you and me, and the hope is some recent slight momentum in the positive direction on Hamlin’s condition will continue. Many Chiefs made that point, from coach Andy Reid to a collection of his players. It’s a misconception to think this extreme of a concern has been accepted as some sort of gamble, even if a minimal one.

For many in the NFL, that lesson came for the first time Monday.

Not before.

“I’m not going to say we take it for granted, but you go out there and you play a game that you love, and you just enjoy it. You don’t think about things like that happening,” Mahomes said. “Whenever something like that happens, I think it impacts everybody.”

To what degree?

For how long?

There’s a to-be-determined reply to that, but it’s impossible, even inside this locker room, to ignore what they saw only 72 hours earlier. However it might have affected you to see it, this is not part of the agreement with them, either. Or at least not what they would admit out loud.

We know the research has proven the potential consequences of playing this sport, but there’s an invincibility to be in your early 20s and in peak physical condition.

That has changed, either for the moment or permanently. Time will tell.

Chiefs safety Juan Thornhill acknowledged Wednesday that he believes some players, particularly those on the back end of their careers, could re-think their futures in the league. (He’s not one of those, by the way.) I’ve talked to agents and former players who expect to be surprised by at least a few sudden retirements this offseason.

The Chiefs held a team meeting and a team prayer to talk about all of this, which offers us an indication of its implications. These guys are humans with human emotions, after all, a message we have been told frequently this week. It’s unfortunate some need to be refreshed of the obvious, but players have used this as an opportunity to ensure that long-delivered message reaches its recipient this time.

But for all of the newfound perspective gained by you, me or someone on the outside, they are the ones with the biggest change in perspective.

The potential for the worst-case scenario is not necessarily reserved for a day down the road, when the game is long behind them.

It is here. When they comprise the game.

And it must be confronted.

“It’s tough to sleep at night — because that could’ve been any one of us,” wide receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling said. “It could’ve been myself, any one of those guys in the locker room. And I think every football player around the country feels that.”