BUFFALO, N.Y. — Thousands of members of the Bills Mafia were at Monday night's game and as soon as Damar Hamlin got hurt, they started showing their support.
They also turned to their phones to try to figure out what was going on.
"You love football so much, but this really kind of brings it into perspective that it is a game and how violent it can be," said Matt Moran.
Matt Moran is from Western New York but lives in Indianapolis now. He bought tickets to the game in May.
Moran says as fans waited to find out more information Monday night about Damar Hamlin's health, they made new friends.
"Bengals fans coming up to us, you know, just strangers coming up to us saying they're here with us, they love us, they're praying for us. I mean, people crying, people just showing so much different emotions," said Matt Moran.
Moran and other fans told us they mostly relied on social media to figure out what was happening.
"We ended up just waiting it out and honestly, Twitter was able to tell me that the game was officially canceled, everybody goes home before the stadium did," said Troy Licastro.
And in this moment, they realized it's more than a game, they just needed to be there for each other and for Hamlin.
"A Cincinnati fan came over and gave us both a hug and said it's not about football, that you need to cancel this game, you know, there's no way no one could come back out and play and we all understood that," said Sara Larson.
"I walked out of the stadium and I had a guy just randomly come up to me and put his hand on my shoulder and he said, I'm sorry," said Troy Licastro.
"We really kind of in that moment discovered that you know, we can't just think about a game or playoffs or what this means for the Bills, it's about Damar and that's all we can really think about now," said Matt Moran.