Bills-Bengals game won't be played this week, NFL says
CINCINNATI - The NFL has decided that there will be no resumption this week of Monday night's suspended game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals as the league awaits further news on the condition of safety Damar Hamlin.
The league put out a statement at 1:30 p.m. that read, “After speaking with both teams and NFLPA leadership, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell informed the clubs today that the Bills-Bengals game will not be resumed this week.”
Beyond that, there is no plan currently in place to reschedule the game, but the NFL did say that the Week 18 schedule will go on as scheduled, meaning the Bills will host the Patriots Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.
Just before the NFL statement, the Bills issued an update on Hamlin’s condition, though the news was no different. It read: “Damar Hamlin spent last night in the intensive care unit and remains there today in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. We are grateful and thankful for the outpouring of support we have received thus far.”
The league has never been confronted with anything like this and the fact that it is happening six days before the end of the regular season complicates matters tremendously.
If there was even a chance the game could be resumed Tuesday night if - and only if - there was encouraging news on Hamlin’s condition and prognosis, that was eliminated the moment the Bills flew back to Buffalo Tuesday night.
And as for the possibility of a Wednesday resumption, meaning the Bills would fly back to Cincinnati Tuesday, again, if the news on Hamlin was encouraging, the league decided that wasn’t feasible.
The league obviously felt that resuming the game Wednesday would put both the Bills and Bengals in a tough situation for Week 18 as both are scheduled to play on Sunday - Buffalo at home against New England and Cincinnati at home against Baltimore, two games with huge playoff ramifications for all four teams.
Another option that might have been possible is to do what the NFL did after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. It postponed all of the Week 2 games and made them up at the end of the regular season, thus pushing the start of the postseason back and eliminating the off week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.
Clearly, the league didn’t want to do that either.
What happens to playoff seeds if Bills vs Bengals game isn't played?
So now, the next decision will be whether to even try resuming the game. And if that is deemed impossible, the easiest solution would be to void the game altogether. Thus, with the Bills and Bengals having played one less game than everyone else, overall winning percentage would be used to determine playoff seeding.
If this happens, here’s how things could play out. If the Chiefs win their game Saturday night in Las Vegas, they would improve to 14-3 and would lock up the No. 1 seed because the best the Bills could do, if they beat the Patriots Sunday, is 13-3. However, that would give them the No. 2 seed over the Bengals who already have four losses.
The league had this plan in place, if needed, for the 2020 and 2021 seasons when the pandemic was ongoing and there were multiple risks of games being postponed that could not be made up. Ultimately, all of the games that were postponed in those years were made up during the season so the winning percentage plan wasn’t needed.
Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's new twice-a-week newsletter, Bills Blast, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills-Bengals game won't be played this week, NFL says
