Fmr. NFL Player on Damar Hamlin and the Violence of Football

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And some good news now. Buffalo Bills player, Damar Hamlin, has been discharge from hospital today. His collapse and cardiac arrest on the football field last week has put safety in the NFL under the microscope. And our next guest certainly knows a thing or two about football injuries. Nate Jackson played for the Denver Broncos for five years before injury ended his career back in 2009. He spent his retirement raising awareness of the dangers of the game. His memoire, “Slow Getting Up” is an eye-opening account of what it’s like to be a professional athlete, who both inflicts and endures pain. Here is what he told Michel Martin.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Nate Jackson, thank you so much for joining us.

NATE JACKSON, FORMER NFL PLAYER AND AUTHOR, “SLOW GETTING UP”: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: So, obviously, people who follow football will probably know you. You wrote a wonderful and very attention getting and frankly fairly graphic memoir about your time in the NFL called “Slow Getting Up”. But for people who don’t follow football so closely, could you just tell us a little bit about what your job was. I mean, you retired. You spent most of your career at the Denver Broncos. You were a tight end.

JACKSON: Yes.

MARTIN: What does that job entail?

JACKSON: So, I was a tight end for four years and a wide receiver for two, so a total of six years with the Denver Broncos. I came into the league as a wide receiver, just wanted to catch passes and get the glory and score touchdowns. And, you know, I did that in college. And then I got to the NFL. And you realize that there is a bunch of other dudes who have the same plan. And so, you have to kind of fall in and do what’s asked of you and after a couple years as a receiver, I was asked to put on some weight and play tight end, which is a much more physical position. You’re down next to the offensive lineman. Your hand is in the dirt. You’re blocking those really large human beings who are really good at their jobs. But also, I got to catch passes as well. But I was a core special teams’ member as well. So, that meant I was on kickoff, kickoff return, punt, punt, return. But that switch from wide receiver to tight end made me a little more intimate with the physicality of the game. Because you’re down there with those big bodies and you’re hitting almost every single play. So, I had my share of injuries. And I — when I stopped playing, I wanted to write about the reality of the NFL. I love football, I always, and I still do. But there is the other side of the coin that a lot of people don’t get to hear about. Don’t get to read about. That is what I wanted to bring to people and that is why I wrote the book.

MARTIN: And something you wrote about in a recent piece for “The Atlantic” is that — it just pierced the reality of it. There’s a lot of inflicting pain and there’s a lot of taking pain.

JACKSON: Right.

MARTIN: Because as a receiver, you’re the target, right?

JACKSON: Yes, you’re — yes, the defense is coming after you. They want to hit you. They want to hurt you. They want to dislodge the ball from you. But it is. It’s about equal, inflicting pain and absorbing it. And from a very early age, I didn’t start playing football until I was in high school. My parents wouldn’t let me. I wanted to at an early age but they knew it was dangerous. And so, they told me that I can’t play until I’m in high school. They were hoping that I would lose interest in that. I didn’t. As soon as I got to high school, I signed up. And got out there and put on a helmet and put on shoulder pads. I have been playing at the park with my friends. I have been playing in the street with my friends, watching every single game that came on. But there’s nothing like the visceral reality of putting on a helmet, putting on shoulder pads, and running full speed into another human being. That’s really what it is. And on day one of football practice, I realized that the sport was a lot different than what I had thought, consuming on television and playing on the street with my friends. Hard plastic and metal, sinking into your supple flesh and bone, day after day after day. The pain is constant and it becomes a badge of honor. It’s about who can endure the most pain. The more pain you can take, the tougher and the more you are celebrated. And so, that becomes ingrained in football players at an early age. And then the inflicting part of it, you know, when you’re desensitized to your own pain, you’re not thinking about your own. I’m certainly not thinking about the pain of my opponent. So, when I hit somebody really, really hard, I’m not worried about how much that hurts him. I’m — I feel good that I’m doing that part of it as well.

MARTIN: One of the reasons that, obviously, we are talking to you right now is that just horrifying scene — the football watching part of the country took in on Monday Night Football.

JACKSON: Yes.

MARTIN: Where a player of the Bills literally went into cardiac arrest on the field. He had to have life-saving intervention on the field. And you know, we are experiencing this, it’s like a terrible shock. But one of the things that you point out in your book, and that you’ve written about subsequently is that we really shouldn’t be shocked. Is that right?

JACKSON: Well, when you’re strictly talking about the action on the field and the collisions and the violence and the speed and the velocity, no, we shouldn’t be shocked. And the fact that we see the guys just pop up from these huge hits, we call them routine football hits, it desensitizes us, the audience, to what those guys are really going through, the physicality of what they are doing. But when you’re down there on the field level, watching these guys, how quickly they move, how big the collisions are. The equipment that some people think, you know, Europeans when they talk about football, they say, oh, you guys are wimpy because you have to wear this armor over you. Well, that armor becomes your most dangerous weapon on a football field. I have a hard helmet on my head. I know the best way to bring down a larger man is to use that armor and hit him with it. So, that becomes a weapon. And so, it is a surprising to me that more stuff like this doesn’t happen. I have been on the field in 2007, for example, we played a game in Buffalo. Kevin Everett was a player for the Buffalo Bills who was covering a kickoff. Had to routine tackle. Put his head down and he broke his neck. He was motionless on the football field for 15 or 20 minutes. You can’t hear a pin drop in the stadium. They brought the ambulance out. Stabilized his neck. Got him in the ambulance, and they drove off. And no sooner was the ambulance out of sight in the tunnel, then that murmur started again in the crowd, that anticipatory football crowd murmur, they were ready for the action again. And sure enough, the whistle blows, and you’re right back at it. So, I think that’s what was unusual about the game we saw last week, was they actually stopped the play because of the reaction of the teammates. You saw those guys circling their teammate who was, you know, they were administering CPR on this guy. And they couldn’t control their emotions. They were sobbing on a football field, which to me, was the biggest surprise because when I go out there on the football field, I believe I’m superman. There’s nothing that can penetrate my aim day armor. And not even the injury of a teammate and the things I’ve seen. You still snap back into it and play football. That was a terrifying scene because of the way his teammates reacted. And the two coaches rightly said, hey, we’re not going to go out there and play the game. The game is over. So, maybe that means we’re evolving. You know, maybe that means we are learning.

MARTIN: This happens, frankly, routinely. People either lose consciousness or they are clearly hurt. They take, you know, hard hits, even routine hits can be very hard hits. You sometimes hear it. I mean, some of the players are mic’ed on the field. And you hear that, kind of, crunching. And so, what do you think has changed? Like, why do you think it is that this particular moment, this particular event was so shocking, both to the players and to the audience? Such that they did have to suspend the game. Why do you think that is?

JACKSON: I believe it was because of the CPR that was being administered. Typically, a guy, you know, breaks his neck, but he’s not — they are not doing pumps on the chest to try to save his life. It was clear to these guys around him, his teammates and coaches, they believe they were watching their friends die on the football field because his heart literally stopped. And I think that was such a frightening situation for those guys, those coaches, those teams that they decided they couldn’t go back out onto the field that day.

MARTIN: Uh-huh.

JACKSON: But, you know, they both — on both teams just played this last week, and both teams are playing in the playoffs. I’m not suggesting that you cancel the game of football. I think that virtues of football outweigh the problems. But, no, I think that that injury was unique and that we all watched. It was on national television. All the eyeballs were there. The camerawork is so detailed and effective, guys get had all the time in the head, and the camera doesn’t catch them. They see stars or go out for a second and the camera never sees them, and you never hear anyone talk about it. You know, you hear old-timers who play for 10 12, 15 years, saying every single game, they would lose consciousness for a minute or two, or a second or two and they snap back into it. So, that’s part of the ethos of the game. The NFL is trying to stop that. They’ve made a lot of rules to try to protect players from, you know, egregious hits, and protect the quarterbacks, or a defenseless receiver from getting teed off on. But there’s just some stuff that happens in the scrum that you don’t ever see and that you can protect. To me, it’s about the medical attention they received after the hit. After the injury. Not pushing someone back on the field the next week. That’s when it becomes really, really problematic. And to me, you know, there are very few professions in the world where you are out there working and you have a circle of doctors watching you perform, waiting for you to drop, so they can give you immediate medical attention. Damar Hamlin’s immediate medical attention saved his life, same with Kevin Everett in Buffalo. And so, that’s very rare to get that kind of immediate medical attention. And I feel like that kind of obscures the reality of what some of these injuries actually are. Because there’s a window time after the injury that’s crucial. These guys always get treatment in that window. And to me, it obscures how violent this game really is.

MARTIN: But why do — why do you think we, as a country, love the sport so much? Why does it have such a grip on us? What do you think?

JACKSON: I think it’s a lot of factors. I think that the very reason that it’s so dangerous and so violent is also one of the reasons that it’s so popular. I think people are drawn to that sort of competition. The collisions, we talked early about that crunching sound, the NFL knows that’s a marketable sound. They have a sound guy on the sideline with a big old satellite mic pointed at those coalitions to get those pieces of sound involved in the broadcast because that’s what people come for. Those big hits. But there’s also the acts of poetic movement. The ballet out there. The piece that you find in the chaos out there. And there is a value in enduring pain. In getting through something you don’t think you’ll be able to get through. It’s violent, but I push myself through it and there is triumphant and glory on the other side of it. There are other sports that dance on that razor’s edge like football does. I found a lot of value in enduring that pain and pushing myself to that distance. And, you know, I endured and saw a lot of pain on the football field. No pain was as great as the pain I felt when it was over for good for me and I saw the game moving on without me. It was in my blood. There was no amount of pain or injury I wouldn’t endure to try to chase this football glory. Because the glory exists on the other side of that pain. And if you can push yourself through it, something beautiful can happen on the other side. I think football fans appreciate that.

MARTIN: The NFL still incredibly popular, incredibly profitable. OK. But there are signs that parents, at least, of younger kids are taking the tactic that your folks did which is they’re not letting their littlest play. I mean, the fact is that participation in the youngest leagues — the leagues that serve the youngest players is falling off. Is that — the fact that there is some increased skepticism about the sport, is that penetrating decision-making at the highest levels?

JACKSON: It certainly is affecting decision-making. The NFL is very aware of the youth participation in the sport. They want to facilitate as many kids playing football as possible. They started this heads-up tackling initiative a few years back to deal with the specific problem. Concussions, for a while, we’re more on the forefront of peoples’ minds when considering the sport. It actually has kind of dissipated. You don’t hear as much talk about CTE anymore as when that was first discovered because of the concussion protocol. But I think some parents are still reticent of it and rightly so. Not every kid should be playing football. When people ask if I’m going to let my son play football, and he’s three years old, I say, I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of athlete he’ll be. I don’t know if he’ll be cut out for it. And I think sometimes, the popularity of football and the popularity of the NFL makes it seem like every little kid’s should be playing football. Every little kid should not be playing football. I remember being in freshman year in high school and there were some kids out there that should not have been out there. They’re — not only where their bodies not developed and they’re practicing against whose kids are developed. But they just don’t have the physical tools to withstand those types of hits. But I think, ultimately, the kids who are cut out for it. The kids who do have that aggressive type of athleticism, that mentality, their bodies are built for it, I don’t see a problem with letting them play football in high school. Allowing them to go out and play the game they love and follow their dreams as long as the medical attention they receive after an injury is sufficient. That’s the most important thing to me. If a kid gets a concussion and it’s clear, don’t let him back on the field. Take his helmet away. Don’t get swept up in the tornado of emotions on the football field that make you think like the only thing that matters here is winning this football game. It’s the livelihood that all these guys are involved in and invested in. And so, when a player tells you, I’m fine. I can go. And you look in his eyes and you believe because you want to win this game, you send him back out there against his best interest and that’s when the real problems come. Not the first concussion, but the one you get five days later. The one you get two weeks after that. That’s what we need to protect these guys from.

MARTIN: So, I guess the question is, where does that ethical responsibility lie? Is it the audience? Is it those of us who watch, who just are so enamored of seeing what the human body can do? It’s — where is it? Where do you think it is?

JACKSON: It’s a great question because the football players who play, they do love the game. They are on their own journey. No one’s forcing them to do that. They fell in love with the game at an early age. And they’re achieving their dreams. But the attention that they get when they play the game well has nothing to do with them. It has to do with our affection with the game. It has to do with the fans. It has to do with the money involved. It has to do with the betting involved. It has to do with the television contracts. I think 50 — the top 50 most viewed television shows last year were all NFL football games. Like an NFL pre-season football game, it gets a higher viewership than a world series game. OK. People are obsessed with watching this game. Of being brought into the drama, to the violence, to the coalitions. No players were forced to do. And a lot of people say, you know what you signed up for, and so, you can’t complain about it. Yes and no. You know it’s violent, but you don’t know the extent of what you’re risking, as far as the brain damage. And we do know a little bit more about that now. But players in the meetings, for example, at the facility aren’t — they’re not talking about their bodies and their health. They’re talking about how to go win this football game. So, the best interest of the players health is not always kept in mind. That’s why the union is really important. And the doctors and neurological specialist who are working with these players are very, very important. But the ethical quandary, I think the — just the popularity of it shows that there is a lot of people who don’t care, you know, what the players are risking. They want their football no matter what. The story I told about Kevin Everette nearly dying on the field. As soon as they got him out of the stadium, the game continued. People wanted to see a football game. And so, as long as that interest as there, there is going to be guys willing to go out and sacrifice their health to play the game.

MARTIN: Do you still watch?

JACKSON: I do.

MARTIN: Do you still —

JACKSON: Yes, I mean —

MARTIN: You still watch.

JACKSON: — I talk about. I host a radio show and I talk about sports for a living. I still love the game. I love the competition. I love what goes into having to be good at it. Football is one of those sports where you can’t cut corners. You can’t fake it. You can’t phone it in or microwave. You have to work hard and do things the right way, and the results show up on the field. If you let up just a little inch for one millimeter of a second, you lose. The play doesn’t work. You lose the game. It requires everyone going all out the entire time. The cooperation it requires from that many people, 53 guys on a team. Plus, like, 15 to 20 coaches. All those guys working together to accomplish one goal. I think that’s what a value much about it. The life lessons persevering, not dwelling on your mistakes, believing in yourself, trusting the guys around you. Being part of a team. That stuff is virtuous and has a role in the outside world. And so, I think football teaches great lessons to people. But the medical attention has to be delivered adequately and immediately and not force these guys back on the field if they have an injury.

MARTIN: Nate Jackson, thanks so much for talking to us.

JACKSON: Thanks, Michel. Appreciate it.