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Damar Hamlin was watching her team beat the New England Patriots on Sunday, but long before that, she checked in with her teammates the day before the game, according to Bills CB Tre’Davious White.
“We got a text from Damar (Saturday) morning around 2:30 in the morning,” White he told the team’s website. “What she said was, ‘I’m thinking of all of you. I’m sorry I did that to you.'” For him to control us, when he’s the person going through what he’s going through, he just shows what kind of person he is.
A three-interception game is always cause for celebration, but that’s especially true for the Buffalo Bills after a week in which one of their own was recovering in a hospital from cardiac arrest.
The Bills defensive backs took three picks from New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones, and Buffalo won the game 35-23 as the entire Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park was awash with tributes to Damar Hamlin.
Bills safety Damar Hamlin watched from the hospital as his teammates toppled the Patriots.
Bills DB’s Dean Marlowe (31) and Tre’Davious White (27) reflected on their tumultuous week
As Hamlin continued to recover in a Cincinnati hospital, cornerback Tre’Davious White and linebackers Matt Milano and Tremaine Edmunds intercepted Jones to help secure the win for Buffalo.
After the game, White and safety Dean Marlowe talked about their mindset going into Sunday’s game, the messages they received from Hamlin and how they got motivated after seeing their teammate in an ambulance.
“This week has been, excuse my language, it’s been a (expletive) show,” White said. ‘Just for something like this to happen, and for it to happen like this. Because of the chances of things like that happening on a soccer field that never happen.
‘Every time I close my eyes, it repeats itself. I try to watch TV and every time the TV cuts to a commercial, that’s the only thing that comes to mind. Just the sight of it. So it’s been a tough week.
It’s been a tough week for our entire team, but it’s not about us right now. It’s about Damar and his father and everything they had to go through with his mom and dad right behind our bench. Watching his son go through that man is just…it’s hard. Hopefully we never have to go through this again.
White opened up, saying Hamlin texted the team early in the morning to see how they were doing.
White added that seeing someone collapse like that is traumatic enough, but added: “For it to be one of our brothers, and then for it to be in our room, in our DB room,” White said. “I was telling someone the other day that our DB room is kind of like my university’s DB room. We are so connected, we hang out outside the field and football never comes up most of the time.
“So anytime you have a bond with guys like that, and to see something like that happen and for me I know that I saw everything happen, from the hit to him getting up, down to everything, it’s just something I can’t stop watching.” . .’
White also said Hamlin texted team members in the early hours of Saturday morning before the game.
‘So he sent us a text… and what he said was, ‘I’m thinking of all of you. I’m sorry I did that to everyone,” White said. “For him to control us, when he’s the person who’s going through what he’s going through, he just shows what kind of person he is.
“For him to control us in a situation like that when he’s the one going through it just shows what kind of person he is.”
White caught one of Buffalo’s three interceptions off Patriots quarterback Mac Jones
In Hamlin’s place, veteran Marlowe stepped in. After not being active since Week 12 and making his first start in Buffalo, he recorded three solo tackles against New England.
“We preach the next man mentality and I’ve been able to be with Damar for the last, I’ll probably say 11 weeks, and I just see him grow every day,” Marlowe said.
And in my mind, it wasn’t about me, it was about playing for him. All I can do is make him look and be proud that the guys in the back are doing his job. So anytime I know I have to do my job and it’s the league. So next man mindset and I go out and play for my brothers.
‘We play the same position and for me to fill in and do the job and do the job. We are human when in the back of our mind we think, “Hey, this situation can be a little bigger because I’m replacing him.”
“But I stood my ground and with the support of my teammates and coaches and then my family, they just said, ‘Go out there and do what you do.’ This is not your first rodeo. You’re here for a reason, go play ball.”
Dean Marlowe made his first start as a member of the Bills in Hamlin’s place on Sunday
White closed by saying that seeing his team rise up to keep going was remarkable and a testament to their strength as a group.
“Honestly, I don’t know how some of us did it,” White said. “Just because some of us had a different view of what happened and that’s traumatizing.
“And before I was telling someone that I had seen traumatic things in my life just growing up where I grew up and in the environment that I was raised in, but it was always the end result of walking around and seeing that. But there was never a time where I saw every part of the event, it all went through to the end.So that’s a tough man.
He later added: ‘Hopefully we can bring him here. I just want to hug him (expletive) because in the meeting room he sits like two seats away from me and every time he walks into the meeting room he’s like, ‘T Weezy!’ So I can’t wait to hear his voice and be able to touch them and just hold him (expletive) and hear that again. So we miss you man and he just comes back to us. It’s been a tough week. It’s been a tough week.
With the win, the Buffalo Bills officially clinched the second seed in the AFC Playoffs.