As the days pass with Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin still in critical condition after suffering cardiac arrest on the playing field, the NFL’s decision regarding what to do about the Bills-Bengals and schedule moving forward becomes more of a topic of conversation.
As of now, the league has only said that the Bills-Bengals game will not be resumed this week, but has not officially canceled the contest. Not canceling it would indicate that the NFL is still open to resuming it at some point after this week.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk confirmed as much when he joined “The PM Team w/ Poni & Mueller on 93.7 The Fan“, saying that high level people in the league are kicking around an idea that would involve playing the first round of the NFC and AFC playoffs on separate weeks, and restarting Bills-Bengals when the the NFC teams play on the first weekend.
“There’s an idea percolating that would go like this,” Florio said. “First week of the playoffs would be NFC wild card only and Bills-Bengals. Second week of the playoffs would be AFC wild card once we know the final seeding in the AFC after the Bills and Bengals play. Then divisional round for everyone, AFC and NFC the following week. Then conference championship, then Super Bowl. You would just wipe out the week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl that currently has nothing other than the Pro Bowl games whenever they’re going to be.”
That sounds like just about the only way to play the Bills-Bengals game, considering it will not be played this week.
Even so, with the league still thinking of ways to play it, Florio ultimately thinks the game will be canceled.
“I can’t imagine that game being played. I think they’re still going to come up with some other solution for resolving that game. No contest, tie, coin flip. That would seem horribly unfair and arbitrary if that’s the outcome, there’s just no good outcome. That’s the problem, there’s just no good outcome so they have to pick the best bad outcome. Who knows at this point what that’s going to be.”