Browns RG Wyatt Teller on Buffalo, Damar Hamlin and a 'special relationship' with football

BEREA — Wyatt Teller didn't spend a long time in Buffalo. He spent all of his rookie season in 2018 and most of the preseason in 2019 with the Bills.

However, that was enough time for Teller, who was traded to the Browns in August 2019, to learn about the community. What he learned in that short amount of time was that it's not like most places.

"That fanbase, they just love their team," the Browns right guard told the Beacon Journal this week. "You have people who — blue-collar community, it's not the big city, I'm telling you that right now, but it's a blue-collar community. You have people who can't afford, they're moving every year, but somehow they keep their season tickets. And they're changing houses every year because they can't afford their house, but they keep their season tickets.

"It shows you about that community. And their outreach is amazing. When I was there, usually younger guys do a lot of the community outreach. They love their Bills up there."

That love has once again come to the national forefront this week because of another most unfortunate situation. Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field last Monday night in Cincinnati after suffering from cardiac arrest.

Hamlin needed to be resuscitated by medical personnel on the field after his heart stopped before being transported to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he still remains in critical condition. However, as the week has gone on, the news has grown increasing positive about the 24-year-old's prognosis.

On Thursday, the Bills and doctors in Cincinnati announced that Hamlin had "shown remarkable improvement over the past 24 hours" and that he "appears to be neurologically intact." The news was even more uplifting on Friday, when the team announced his breathing tube had been removed and that he was able to speak to his family and medical personnel at the hospital.

More than that, Hamlin was able to talk to his Bills teammates for the first time since Monday night. He spoke via Facetime, first to several teammates before addressing the team as a whole.

Those same teammates, just days earlier, had been huddled around Hamlin in prayer, just hoping for a miracle. A miracle that, it appears, will happen.

"It's just a brotherhood," Teller said. "I'm not saying a team that goes to church together stays together, but I'm saying they love each other on a different basis. They're not just teammates, they're brothers. They're brothers in Christ. To them, it's a very close-knit group. Everybody hangs out.

"Like I said, there's nothing to do in Buffalo, so they all hang out. They all love the Lord. I know that No. 3 (Hamlin) was very outspoken about his faith, so to see all that and then to see the immediate response was powerful."

The direction of Hamlin's recovery provides, Teller believes, the potential for another positive outcome from a potentially negative situation to impact the Buffalo area over the last several months.

First, there was the May mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Market that killed 10 and injured another three. More than six feet of snow then hit the area in mid November, tragically killing three in New York, while also forcing the Bills' home game against the Browns to be moved to Detroit. Another massive storm with more than 50 inches of snow hit the region right before Christmas, taking more than 35 lives.

Then, there was Monday night. And what followed was an outpouring of support, not just from "Bills Mafia," but from across the country.

"I think they went through a lot of tough things this year," Teller said. "To have anything happen to your city, it's tough, but to have a handful of things, it's really sad. A lot of loss of life. We pray 'No more,' but that's just kind of how life goes. Super sad.

"I think that when Hamlin went down, you see both sides get to a knee, glorify and ask God for an understanding. We don't always know the reasons, we don't always know the 'why,' and it's not our job to know. I think they have a special relationship."

It's a relationship, though, that extends across the NFL. Conversations took place in locker rooms and team facilities across the league in the days that followed, leading players to ask themselves questions.

Football players, especially those like Teller who are good enough to reach the pinnacle of the sport by playing in the NFL, have acknowledged the inherent risks they take doing their jobs on a daily basis. Teller, himself, battled a calf injury that kept him out of multiple games in October and which remains something he's trying to overcome.

Some of Teller's Browns teammates have sustained season-ending injuries to ACLs or quad tendons or pectoral muscles. Other have spent time in concussion protocol.

None of those, as upsetting as they may be within a locker room to individuals, necessarily hit with the visceral reaction the way the sight of Hamlin collapsing and fighting for his life after a seemingly innocuous play did.

"We all go through kind of compartmentalizing it: 'That's a freak accident,'" Teller said. "That's the first time a player has been carted off like that in that kind of situation. We have seen injuries. Whether you feel it or not, we understand that all these constant hits to the head or going to do something, whether it be you have a higher risk of CTE or several CTE or whatever it is, no matter what, everybody's going to go through it, even the kickers. Everybody deals with it. … It just shows you that it is sad. It is dangerous."

Yet, on Sunday afternoon, Teller will be on the field in Pittsburgh with the rest of his Browns teammates for the season finale against the Steelers. They'll play knowing that any snap could be the last one of not just their season, but their careers.

They'll do so knowing what happened to Damar Hamlin less than a week earlier. Yet, they'll also have their own reasons why, even with those risks, they keep on playing the game they love so much.

"In my weird way, in the way that I view it, God gave me gifts, and I want to multiple those gifts, grow those gifts and be the best at what I do to glorify him," Teller said. "If that's playing a really violent sport with an opportunity and a chance, especially when I just had a son, it's mind-numbing a little bit, but at the same time I hope to give him a life that I never had. That kind of goes hand in hand with risking it like that."

Contact Chris at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com.

On Twitter: @ceasterlingABJ

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Wyatt Teller on Buffalo, Damar Hamlin and 'relationship' with football