Late Monday night after the first-quarter stoppage of a Week 17 contest, word broke that Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow led the charge in taking team captains to the Buffalo Bills locker room in order to check up on the players there.
Now we have more confirmation on that front.
Bengals long-snapper Cal Adomitis, who played with Damar Hamlin at two different stops, confirmed to The Athletic’s Mike DeFabo that Burrow was the first to ask about the possibility of taking captains and visiting the Bills locker room.
Names like Ted Karras and Joe Mixon accompanied Burrow on the trip.
DeFabo shared the nugget on Twitter:
More from Adomitis on Damar Hamlin: "Even though he was a dude who had 8 billion offers coming out of high school and I was just fighting to get on the field, he always treated me with respect… No matter what your role on the team was, he treated you with the same dignity."
— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) January 3, 2023
More from Cal Adomitis, who played with Damar Hamlin at Central Catholic and Pitt: "If there's anyone that's capable of pulling through and coming out the other side, alright, it's him."
— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) January 3, 2023
In the heat of a tragic moment, it was apparently Burrow who spoke up first and got the wheels in motion for the check-up on Bills players. That’s a testament to both Burrow and the culture head coach Zac Taylor has instilled in the organization — the head coach himself visited the hospital where Hamlin remains in critical condition as of this writing, although there are positive recent updates.
