Monday’s Bills-Bengals NFL regular season game — halted in the first quarter when Bills S Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field — will not be resumed, the NFL officially announced Thursday.
There had been speculation that the NFL would push back the start of the playoffs to allow the Bills and Bengals to make up the game in a special “Week 19,” but the league has instead cancelled the game entirely and will move forward with both teams playing a 16-game season — one fewer than the other 30 teams.
The cancellation of the game will have a significant impact on playoff seeding, specifically advantaging the current #1 seed Kansas City Chiefs (had Buffalo beaten Cincinnati on Monday, it would have assumed the #1 seed). As a result, the league’s competition committee has approved a resolution from commissioner Roger Goodell wherein the AFC Championship Game would be held at a neutral site if either Buffalo or Cincinnati were slated to face Kansas City on the road.
It has also approved a separate resolution to determine home field advantage in a potential Ravens-Bengals playoff game by coin toss if Baltimore beats Cincinnati in the teams’ season finale this weekend.
Hamlin as of Thursday night remained in critical condition in a Cincinnati hospital, but has made what is being termed “remarkable progress.” He is said to be awake and communicative (via writing).
Bills-Bengals becomes the first cancelled NFL game in recent memory. In two seasons marred by COVID-19 postponements, the league was able to play every game. With Monday’s incident occurring in the penultimate week of the season, there was no way to make the game up without pushing back the playoffs.
(News from NFL)
