NFL won't reschedule Bills-Bengals game, set to modify AFC playoffs

The NFL will not reschedule Monday night's postponed game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, and the league said Thursday that it is set to adjust its playoff format in an attempt to address the competitive inequities arising from that decision.

Under the revised system, the AFC championship game could be played at a neutral site, under certain conditions. Those circumstances involve the Bills or Bengals reaching the game as the road team.

The modifications were recommended by Commissioner Roger Goodell and approved by the league's rulemaking competition committee, the NFL said. They will be considered Friday by the league's team owners, who are scheduled to meet by videoconference.

"As we considered the football schedule, our principles have been to limit disruption across the league and minimize competitive inequities," Goodell said in a statement. "I recognize that there is no perfect solution. The proposal we are asking the ownership to consider, however, addresses the most significant potential equitable issues created by the difficult, but necessary, decision not to play the game under these extraordinary circumstances."

The Bengals and Baltimore Ravens also could have the site of a prospective opening-round playoff meeting determined by a coin flip, under the modified format being proposed.

The NFL's deliberations over its scheduling issues began after Monday's game in Cincinnati was stopped during the first quarter. Bills safety Damar Hamlin was injured on a hit and suffered cardiac arrest on the field. The game was postponed later that night. Hamlin's doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said Thursday that he had made substantial progress in his recovery.

The league decided Thursday to declare the Bills-Bengals game a cancellation. Those two teams will play 16 regular season games apiece, one fewer than other NFL teams. The playoff seeding in the AFC will be determined by teams' winning percentages.

The decision gives the Kansas City Chiefs a pathway to the top playoff seed in the AFC, ahead of the Bills. The Chiefs can secure that with a victory Saturday in Las Vegas over the Raiders. Before the postponement, the Bills had been just ahead of the Chiefs based on a tiebreaker advantage from a head-to-head victory this season; they could have secured the No. 1 seed by beating the Bengals on Monday and the New England Patriots on Sunday to finish the regular season.

Once it decided not to reschedule the postponed game, the NFL sorted through a range of possibilities. There was speculation about the possibilities of adding an eighth playoff team to the AFC's postseason field; adding an eighth playoff team in both conferences; or making the AFC's top-seeded team choose between having a first-round bye or home-field advantage in the conference title game.

DeMaurice Smith, the NFL Players Association's executive director, said earlier Thursday that the league would have to bargain with the union to add a playoff team or teams. Smith said he had not received such a proposal from the NFL.

The league did not consider adding an eighth team to the AFC playoffs, a person familiar with the deliberations said.

NFL officials had said they would consider all scheduling options. The league previously said the Bills-Bengals game would not be resumed this week. Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, said Wednesday that "everything is being considered."

The league could have rescheduled a Bills-Bengals resumption as a stand-alone game in an additional weekend added to the regular season, pushing back the playoffs and eliminating the off weekend between the conference title games and the Super Bowl. It also could have played the remainder of the postponed game on a weekend including NFC playoff games while pushing back the AFC playoff games by a week.

Instead, the NFL chose not to revisit the postponed game. The league had to deal with rearranging its schedule in recent seasons affected by the pandemic. But this time, the postponement came so late in the regular season that there was no room to maneuver without pushing back the playoffs.

Vincent said Wednesday that the NFL's scheduling decision might not be able to ensure competitive fairness, under the circumstances.

"As we saw, potentially there may be a lack of equity," Vincent said, "where it may not be perfect but it will allow those that are participating, who have earned that right to play, to continue to play."

fbn-playoffs