The football world was turned upside down on Monday night when Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during a football game between the Bills and Cincinnati Bengals.

The 11-4 Bengals were hosting the 12-3 Bills in a game that was set to have vast playoff implications. Both teams were vying for the No. 1 seed in the AFC, and the winner of Monday night’s game would be in great position to secure it.

The Bills had won their previous six games, and the Bengals had won their previous seven games, making it the most anticipated game of the week, or perhaps the season.

Suddenly, none of it mattered.

In the first quarter, Bills safety Damar Hamlin made a routine tackle of Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins. After making the tackle, Hamlin stood up and then collapsed, falling back on the ground.

Team trainers and medical staff rushed onto the field to help Hamlin, who was obviously in critical condition. He was eventually helped into an ambulance and later transported to a nearby hospital in Cincinnati.

The game was postponed, and fans left the stadium. However, football wasn’t on the mind of a single fan that night. Hamlin was.

The Bills safety is currently progressing well, according to doctors. He is breathing on his own, and has communicated with his teammates via FaceTime.

Hamlin’s doctors met with the media earlier in the week.

“We would like to share that there has been substantial improvement over the past 24 hours,” said the doctors. “As of this morning, he is beginning to awaken and it appears that his neurological condition and function is intact.”

The 24-year-old had his breathing tube removed overnight between Thursday and Friday, and even posted on Instagram on Saturday, marking his first form of public communication since the incident.

“When you put real love out into the world it comes back to you 3x’s as much,” Hamlin wrote in his post. “The Love has been overwhelming, but I’m thankful for every single person that prayed for me and reached out.

On Thursday night, the NFL announced that the week 17 game between the Bills and Bengals would not be resumed, and that it would be deemed a ‘no contest.’

With the football world returning back to near-normal, the NFL is scrambling to find a solution to its problem. For the first time since 1935, not all NFL teams will have played the same number of regular-season games, making for a playoff disaster, both seeding wise and home field advantage wise.

The game of football has been played for more than a century, and this is, perhaps, one of the worst injuries in the sport’s history. It’s important to realize that, in the end, football players are humans, too. 

Although it may not seem like it, they have emotions, and they have things that they go through, and when something tragic happens like it did on Monday night, we see the raw emotion of players that a lot of fans and people idolize.

Football is a dangerous sport, and although an instance such as Hamlin’s is likely to be a one-in-a-million, it’s still a possibility, and a scary one.