NFL, NBC turned Damar Hamlin’s return to Cincy into grief porn

The Buffalo Bills playing the CIncinnati Bengals, Week 9, at Paycor Stadium made me feel uneasy. There is nothing wrong with two of the NFL’s best teams matching up on Sunday Night Football, but NBC’s intro that centered around Damar Hamlin nearly dying 10 months prior in that stadium was total grief porn.

Hamlin had gone into cardiac arrest and that Monday Night Football game was canceled. It was the logical move as stunned players watched in shock and horror, while medical professionals worked to revive Hamlin after he collapsed. Not only was his life saved, but he would eventually be cleared to play professional football again.

There was no way for the NBC broadcast to ignore what happened in January. To do something that was intentionally evasive would have been disingenuous. A party that deserves criticism for putting the network in that position is the NFL. The Bills playing for a second-consecutive season in Cincinnati was unnecessary.

As one of the best teams in the AFC last season, the Bills were going to have a difficult schedule, but that could have been done even without Hamlin’s near-death encounter being exploited for viewership. Getting 10s of millions of people to watch Sunday Night Football is not hard. Chicago Bears vs. Los Angeles Chargers averaged more than 15 million viewers with Justin Fields out and the game being played in a stadium in which the Chargers never have a home-field advantage.

While the NFL scheduled Bills vs. Bengals like it was a playoff rematch as opposed to one of the most frightening moments in television history, the NBC crew also approached the game in a way that capitalized on the near tragedy.

The opening package that aired before kickoff centered around Hamlin’s collapse and recovery. The dramatic music, cinematic shots of the stadium and John Legend’s narration were all a bit much. In telling the story in epic fashion, NBC came off a bit tone deaf.

At the end of the package Legend said, “Tonight, it’s actually just a game.” I assume the idea was for the NFL to take people quickly through Hamlin’s journey from needing life-saving medical care to making the Bills’ 53-man roster, and celebrate the fact that he still can play football.

Instead, the intro to the game felt like “Come see NFL football in a the place where one of the 100-plus athletes on the field and left in an ambulance clinging to life.” What happened on the field in January was not a movie, and Sunday was certainly not a sequel. Hamlin’s heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated.

That is a moment not to be treated in a similar fashion to Taylor Swift at Metlife stadium. A follow-along instructional video on how to perform CPR and use of a defibrillator would have paid better respect to Hamlin than a movie trailer disguised as an intro to a football game with major playoff implications.

Either acknowledge the moment properly or don’t do it at all. The broadcast team of Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth and Melissa Stark did a good job of relaying how dire circumstances were the last time these two teams were playing, but also keeping the coverage upbeat.

That was necessary, but the entrance video was not. There were many ways to remember the magnitude of that night. The NFL and NBC picked the wrong one.