ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Safety Damar Hamlin is returning to Buffalo for a sixth season after signing a one-year contract with the team on Friday.<\/p>\n
Hamlin was a free agent after his one-year contract expired. And he\u2019s staying in Buffalo where the 28-year-old has served as an inspiration for perseverance following his remarkable comeback after a near-death experience three years ago.<\/p>\n
Hamlin has shown no signs of a setback since he went into cardiac arrest and needed to be resuscitated on the field during a game at Cincinnati in January 2023.<\/p>\n
Though he was eased back into action in being limited to playing five games the following season, Hamlin had a career-high 14 starts in 2024. He was relegated to a backup role last season and limited to just five games after landing on injured reserve because of a pectoral injury sustained in practice.<\/p>\n
Hamlin is expected to compete for a backup spot on a team and defense in transition. Jim Leonhard takes over as coordinator under new coach Joe Brady, who was promoted in January after Sean McDermott was fired.<\/p>\n
The Bills have since signed free-agent safeties C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Geno Stone, who are anticipated to compete for the starting job opposite Cole Bishop.<\/p>\n
Buffalo selected Hamlin in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of Pittsburgh. He has two interceptions in 53 career games, including 27 starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Safety Damar Hamlin is returning to Buffalo for a sixth season after signing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2048],"tags":[215,115634,214,53,2086,1172,1737,7,6486,90259,12228,6,83966,27878,27876,115635,93579,115180,95241,3026],"class_list":["post-840824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-buffalo-bills","tag-bills","tag-bills-damar-hamlin","tag-buffalo","tag-buffalo-bills","tag-buffalobills","tag-c-j-gardner-johnson","tag-cole-bishop","tag-football","tag-geno-stone","tag-jim-leonhard","tag-joe-brady","tag-nfl","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32000-ap-online-football-news","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40803-ap-new-york-state-sports-only","tag-product-40809-ap-pennsylvania-sports-only","tag-sean-mcdermott"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}