Chuck Hughes, 51 years ago, died after collapsing on The Field. The NFL continued to play.

Monday’s NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bill was postponed after Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field. The NFL ended the game 51 years ago after a Detroit Lions receiver died from heart failure.

The Detroit Tigers Stadium hosted the Chicago Bears against the Lions on October 24, 1971. Chuck Hughes, 28, a former star at Texas Western College in college, was injured and entered the game in quarter four. The Lions were down by 28 points to 23 at the end of the fourth quarter and Hughes caught a 32-yard touchdown pass.

Three plays later, as Lions quarterback Greg Landry threw a  pass dropped in the end zone by tight end Charlie Sanders, Hughes started running back to the huddle. Hughes began to have convulsions and collapsed around the 20-yard mark.

Bears Football Hall-of-Fame middle linebacker Dick Butkus frantically alerted the officials and the sideline, prompting the Lions’ and Bears’ doctors and trainers to attempt to save Hughes. He was taken by Henry Ford Hospital and declared dead at 50 minutes.

Hughes was later taken to the airport. Later, it was discovered that Hughes had undiagnosed advanced arteriosclerosis and died from coronary thrombosis. His wife Sharon Leah and their nearly 2-year-old son Brandon Shane survived him.

Interviewed in 2013, Sharon Hughes, then 68 and serving as a bus driver and librarian, recalled how she loved her husband’s smile, saying, “He was confident, that boy. … He was gorgeous to me.”

“The players used to say he was a friendly, Western kind of guy,” Sharon also added. “He had a good sense of humor and laughed a lot. He had a really strong giggle. His sister had the same giggle. If he got tickled he’d giggle.”

Seven weeks before he died, in the Lions’ final preseason game against Bills, Hughes had collapsed in the locker room after the game and was taken to Henry Ford Hospital, but doctors thought he had an injury to his spleen, lung or kidney. He left the hospital with what appeared to be a fever.

Henry Ford Hospital was sued by Sharon Hughes in 1972. The suit was settled in 1974 for an undisclosed sum.

Hughes set records at his college which still stand; among them are the most all-purpose yards in a single game, 401 in 1965, and the most yards per reception for a single game, 34.9, also in 1965, which is  also an NCAA record.

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