Thomas Graham Jr. was in the car picking up his sister from the airport Monday night when he received a phone call from his father. He wanted to let him know that something was happening to his friend.
That friend was Damar Hamlin.
“Your boy from Pitt went down,” Graham Sr. said.
“Oh,” Graham Jr. said. “Is he OK?”
He wasn’t sure what to make of his dad’s response to his question: “I don’t know.”
Seconds after they hung up later, Graham Sr. called him again. He watched the replay of Hamlin collapsing to the turf after he stood up following a big hit to the chest from Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.” He also heard commentator Joe Buck say on the broadcast that Hamlin was being administered CPR.
Graham Sr. relayed the news to him.
“CPR?” Graham Jr. said. “What… What happened?”
That was one of the questions everyone watching the game was thinking as concerns for Hamlin’s health grew every minute he remained on the field. Hamlin left in an ambulance 23 minutes after he fell and needed to be resuscitated. He suffered a cardiac arrest due to the hit, and the game was postponed.
Graham, the Browns’ second-year cornerback, met Hamlin when they both attended the Senior Bowl in 2021 and remained in touch ever since their NFL careers began. They texted about how their jobs were going and how their families were doing — their parents also met each other at the Senior Bowl — and always tapped the “like” button on each other’s posts on social media. They chatted and took a picture together after the Browns’ game against the Bills on Nov. 20, and they looked forward to the next time they’d be on the same field again.
Graham, like many others anxiously awaiting updates, struggled to sleep Monday night as he constantly refreshed the Bills’ pages on Twitter and Instagram. He also sent Hamlin a text knowing his phone was likely flooded with messages from anyone who knew him.
“I went to bed around 2 o’clock (in the morning), but I was probably waking…
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