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Damar Hamlin’s back with the Buffalo Bills for another year. The team announced Friday they’ve re-signed the safety to a one-year deal after injury ended his 2025 season early.
Hamlin only got into five games last year – a pectoral injury he picked up in practice required surgery and shut him down in October. He’s 28 now, and he’ll be working in a safeties group that looks pretty different than before; Buffalo added C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Geno Stone through free agency this offseason.
Buffalo took Hamlin in the sixth round back in 2021. He started out as a backup and special teams guy, doing the dirty work most draft picks in that range handle early on.
Injuries to other players gave him some starting opportunities in 2022. That included the Jan. 2, 2023 Monday Night Football game against Cincinnati – the one where Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field and had to be resuscitated right there in front of everyone.
What happened that night changed everything.
After his recovery, doctors cleared Hamlin to play football again. He chose to keep going, serving as a backup throughout 2023 before earning the starting job in 2024. He started 14 games that season and grabbed the first two interceptions of his career.
The football stats only tell part of Hamlin’s story though. His Chasing M’s Foundation pulled in millions of dollars after his cardiac arrest; people wanted to help, wanted to be part of something bigger than the game itself.
Since then, Chasing M’s has partnered with Hamlin, the Bills, the NFL and a bunch of other organizations to push heart health awareness. They’re teaching CPR, getting AEDs (those automated external defibrillators) into more places, pushing for new legislation – basically trying to make sure what happened to Hamlin doesn’t happen to someone else without people knowing what to do.
Along with the contract extension, Hamlin’s got some competition for playing time this year. Gardner-Johnson came over after stints with Philadelphia and Detroit, while Stone spent last season in Baltimore’s secondary.
