When the NFL canceled the pivotal Week 17 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills due to the terrifying Damar Hamlin injury, it became obvious that the league needed to make some changes to the playoff format as the game obviously affected seeding for the upcoming playoff games. Of all the teams affected, the Bengals seemed to be negatively impacted the most.
While the league moved a potential AFC Championship matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills to a neutral site in Atlanta because the canceled game affected playoff seeding, the NFL did not give the Bengals the same accommodations for the upcoming game against Buffalo, even though the Bengals would have earned home-field advantage in this game if they beat Buffalo during that Monday night game – a game that was played in Cincinnati that the Bengals were leading when it was called.
Apparently, the NFL considered playing the upcoming game at a neutral site but decided against it, for no clear reason.
“There was some discussion,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said according to the Buffalo News, “but membership thought it was best for [only] the championship game to be at a neutral site.”
What’s worse is that NFL actually did accommodate the Baltimore Ravens to the potential detriment of Cincinnati.
If the Bengals would have lost the game against the Bills, the Ravens could have won the AFC North with a win over Cincinnati in Week 18. So the league decided to determine home-field advantage in the Wild Card round with a coin flip if the Bengals lost to the Ravens – which ultimately didn’t happen.
So the league made plans for if Cincinnati would have lost to the Bills in the canceled game, but not if they won.
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