The instant cardiac arrest of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was so jolting that it even stopped an NFL game that might affect the outcome of the Superbowl.

Personally, I’m surprised that the NFL hasn’t had more severe and near-fatal injuries.

Because passers and receivers have become more accurate, it’s become obvious to defensive backs that the most effective way to break up a pass is to hit the receiver full-force the instant he catches the ball. This timing is so close that I’ve seen more than a few cases where the receiver has been effectively tackled even before his fingers could touch the ball and where the officials didn’t call a penalty. And on more and more pass routes, the interaction between the receiver and the defensive back resembles a wrestling match run at full speed.

And that’s from someone who doesn’t watch all that much football any more. In fact, I haven’t seen a complete game in more than thirty years.

This sort of split-second brutality has become more and more of a feature of the game, especially for quarterbacks and receivers. A number of NFL teams are on their second-string, if not third-string, quarterbacks this year. In the years long ago when I did watch professional football a bit more intently, I don’t recall the plethora of injured quarterbacks I read about now.

While Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday was regarded as satire and overkill when it came out in 1999, what happened to Damar Hamlin is exactly what Stone was pointing out about professional football – that it’s a barbaric, scuzzy, gladiatorial battle of blood, sweat and tears that grinds down the players to powder and rewards them with fleeting fame… and possibly enough money to sustain some of them in a physically diminished life after football.