Damar Hamlin, Tyler Boyd And The Intertwined Laces of Football And Life

As speculation swirled of cancelled games and changed rules and ownership meetings and what was next in the life of the Bengals and Bills as Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin began his climb back, the Western PA moms, as usual, were keeping it together.

Family and football and reminding us we’re all connected and intertwined like the laces of a football.

That’s what it is in places like McKees Rocks, Hamlin’s hometown, and Clairton, the crib of Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd on the hard edges of Pittsburgh, about 18 miles from each other. Everyone, it seems, is woven around football. Growing up and playing at Pitt, there was one role model who made it big and it was Boyd and that’s how they became “boys,” long before Hamlin collapsed of a cardiac arrest Monday night at Paycor Stadium as the two played against each other for the first time in the NFL.

So Nina Hamlin reached out to Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins to reassure him it was fate and not him that felled her son. Hamlin had met Higgins while they both worked Boyd’s youth camp in Clairton Meanwhile, Boyd’s mom reached out to Mario Hamlin, Damar’s father she knows through the Western Pennsylvania Youth Athletic Association. Tonya Payne is president of the organization that helped keep Tyler off Clairton’s mean streets and is mushrooming with her son’s generosity. Mario coaches the Sto-Rox Little Vikings, where she believes Damar has a little brother playing.

“I texted Damar’s dad just to let them know I was going to stay in town and if they needed anything, like food or toiletries or whatever they needed, I could get out to the store,” said Tonya Payne Thursday night, back in Pittsburgh. “He got back to me a few hours later with an update. I can’t imagine.”

So there was sanity in a week of uncertainly and despair.

It is the kind of wild, wild week where the Bengals didn’t know if or when they would play Buffalo again. As word broke Thursday they would not in the first cancelled game since 1935 and FDR and the NRA…