I think they have the biggest disadvantage. They controlled their own destiny for the #1 seed (bye AND HFA) now they have neither.
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How will the NFL handle scheduling the remainder of football this year? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter SeniorVBDStudent
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cheese
Footballguy
Pretty sure if the Bills down 7-3 or even pregame going to Cincy were offered the chance to host the Bengals and not go to KC they would sign up in 1 second. The more likely scenario is they were headed to both places. Meanwhile, the Bengals lost the home regular season Bills game, might go to Baltimore, can't get the 1 seed, have to go to Buffalo, all as a result of not playing this game.
How is this more likely scenario? The Bills were actually favored going into the game. However, the game didnt happen according to the NFL. Wipe it from your existence. Both the Bengals and Bills will play a 16 game schedule and the Bills currently have one less loss during those 16 games.
The Bills get out of having to play an incredibly tough prime time road game. If they had lost that game they would have most likely been the three seed. The Bills basically got a tie out of the Monday night game and came out as the 2 seed, assuming they win this weekend.
The Bengals controlled their own destiny for the 2 seed. They no longer have that. They would have had an outside shot at the 1 seed. They no longer have that. If the Monday night game had been treated as a tie the Bengals would have been AFC North champions and guaranteed a home playoff game. They do not have that.
The Bengals will end up playing 7 home games and 9 road games in the regular season. They had a prime time home game taken away that was an unbelievable atmosphere where they came out on fire and we’re leading 7-3 and driving with the ball. Obviously no one knows how that game would have turned out but it’s a huge game to have cancelled.
I’m glad and proud of the way the Bengals handled the situation and hope they would do everything the same way again. I was there that night and don’t believe there is any way those players could have continued. The whole situation sucks but for some reason throughout this entire thread it seems like people are absolutely minimizing what the Bengals lost out on.
One can also say the Bengals got out of playing an incredibly tough game as well. The Bills were actually favored.
They have one more loss than Buffalo. How are they screwed? Its amazing how all of a sudden everyone seems to think the Bengals were a lock to beat Buffalo. They were a coin flip at best in that game. As a matter of fact, the Bills were favored.
Agreed. But the Bills got a tie out of the situation. The Bengals got worse than a tie.
cheese
Footballguy
Except losing that game would put them in the position the nfl just put them in anyway so there is no risk. The Bills were not favored when the injury happened either and you know that.
Because the Bengals have one more loss
I have no idea what the odds were at the time of the injury but I do know declaring a game over after both teams had one drive and both teams scored seems foolhardy. You know that.
cheese
Footballguy
Just take my word for it then. The Bengals were favored. Nobody at any point said it was over or close to over.
That has nothing to do with being declared AFC North champions but not having a guaranteed home game. That’s ridiculous.
Bottomfeeder Sports
Footballguy
The league office will tell the owners that this is a rather weak slate of television games to try to fill six viewing windows and that they really need Buffalo and Cincinnati to play to appease their television partners. And the owners will fall in line.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I know this is unpopular to point out, but the Bills players and coaches voluntarily chose not to continue the game on Monday night. They controlled their destiny when the game started, and then they made their choice. I'm not going to second-guess their decision to quit, and my guess is that they probably would have accepted a forfeit if that was the decision. Regardless, it's just not reasonable for one team to refuse to play on then turn around and insist that the league pretend as if they won.
I mean, as a Bills fan, that would be great. Indefensible, but great.
Goodness, what a mess if the league already had rules in place for how to deal with games not played.
I can’t disagree strongly enough to anyone saying it was the Bills decision to not finish the game the other night. I can’t imagine the Bengals were fired up to get back to out there.
I can’t disagree strongly enough to anyone saying it was the Bills decision to not finish the game the other night. I can’t imagine the Bengals were fired up to get back to out there.
ignatiusjreilly
Footballguy
Chiefs
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
But that's what actually happened, though. If the Bills had wanted to continue, the game would have continued. Nobody involved in this disagrees with that.
For the record, here's McDermott (paywalled, sorry):
This situation did actually play out exactly like everybody assumed it did. The league expected that the game would continue. The Bills didn't want to continue, and the Bengals (classfully) supported them. Everybody involved made perfectly reasonable decisions IMO. There's no reason to deny that a decision was made.
Here's a non-paywalled account from yesterday's presser: https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buff...f-how-he-experienced-damar-hamlin-injury.html
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BobbyLayne
Footballguy
NOT that they're going to need a neutral site, but Rap just tweeted they're putting in new turf as soon as the season ends so it won't be available.
Hopefully getting rid of that awful slit film (MetLife Stadium (New Jersey teams), Ford Field (Lions), U.S. Bank Stadium (Vikings), Caesars Superdome (Saints), Lucas Oil Stadium (Colts) and Paycor Stadium (Bengals).
Capella
Footballguy
Wonder where it will be if that game happens. Indy? Green Bay would be cool.
BobbyLayne
Footballguy
Crazy
NFLN saying they’re voting Monday on 3 proposals - BUF/KC championship is probably going to be a neutral site
If BAL wins Sunday, Bengals win the division but if they meet in the playoffs they’ll flip a coin for home field
(edit: I might be the last person to have heard this since it came out 15 hours ago lol)
Indy is 482 miles from Kanasas City, MO and 498 miles from Buffalo. Seems ideal and in grand scheme of things this week it's minor but I hate it.Not a fan of dome playoff football and we lose either a game in KC or Buffalo in the elements in January.
lol what do you think the last 2 pages are about?
bryhamm
Footballguy
And the Bills controlled their own destiny for the 1 seed. They no longer have that.
It's like you are picking and choosing which "arguments" to include to support one side.
BobbyLayne
Footballguy
IDK stuff I hadn’t read
yeah I kind of figured out what a doofus I was when I saw the time stamp of the story I was reading
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Weird to see this kind of thing happening on the internet, of all places.
Dez
Footballguy
It seems strange to me that so many are complaining about what the NFL is proposing to do. I think it is actually very thought out and very fair. They basically put the chances of winning of each team at 50% for Buf/Cin and are accounting for this in each situation.
The most creative one of all is the potential coin flip should Baltimore beat Cincy this is because Cincy would be up a half game on Baltimore but have been swept and if they had a 50/50 shot of beating Buffalo that means Baltimore had a 50/50 shot of winning the division thus the coin flip.
If Buffalo had won they were in line for #1 seed if Buffalo lost they were favored to be #3 seed. No one knows what would have happened so if they finish within a half game of KC they get a neutral site game. I guess the NFL could have coin flipped that as well.
The NFL did the best in a bad situation.
The most creative one of all is the potential coin flip should Baltimore beat Cincy this is because Cincy would be up a half game on Baltimore but have been swept and if they had a 50/50 shot of beating Buffalo that means Baltimore had a 50/50 shot of winning the division thus the coin flip.
If Buffalo had won they were in line for #1 seed if Buffalo lost they were favored to be #3 seed. No one knows what would have happened so if they finish within a half game of KC they get a neutral site game. I guess the NFL could have coin flipped that as well.
The NFL did the best in a bad situation.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
The argument against all of this is they already have a rule and a process for handling all this. In the event of teams not all playing the same number of games, standings and seedings will be based on winning percentage. That's what the rule says, and the 32 franchises all agreed to it and were aware of it. (There is also a rule that grants the commissioner leeway to handle the game that got cancelled, but that apparently only extends to the scheduling or cancellation of the game.)
For starters, all the things that are proposed have to be voted on, and 24 teams have to vote to accept the new proposed solution. If the proposal doesn't get enough votes, then the fall back is what is in the rules . . . seedings will be determined by winning percentage. Then there would be no coin tosses, no neutral site games, or outcome-based scenarios.
And we still don't know what record each team will have after Week 18, so some of this could turn out to be noise anyway. We might not even get a KC/BUF playoff matchup, so there is a decent shot that none of this materializes.
Bottomfeeder Sports
Footballguy
In the fantasy implications thread, I argued that following the existing rules and not trying to fix the unsatisfying result is a strength, not a weakness. The same applies here.
That being said I think what the NFL did here was to try to appease TV partners and have the Bill and Bengals (and maybe also the Ravens) "show up" on Sunday to not waste two of the few compelling match ups left on Sunday in the 1:00 and 4:00 windows.
ETA: And if the voting on this proposal is actually on Monday, it could all be a lie anyway.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
socrates
Footballguy
I know. Like actually playing the game. That opportunity was missed. It seems odd to me that the NFL did not continue the game to Wed night. However, if both teams were on board with cancelling the game, and understand that was their preference, they were the only ones who really stood to lose anything. Buffalo lost its best shot at the #1 seed in the AFC, and Cincinnati lost its best shot at hosting a potential playoff game against Buffalo.
Grigs Allmoon
Footballguy
Pretty sure it has already been voted on, or will be very soon. They were saying on NFLN that there was a meeting scheduled to start at Noon today, in which the proposal would be voted on.
Grigs Allmoon
Footballguy
And, just as I submit that post, it was just announced that the proposal has passed.
Dez
Footballguy
Vote passed apparently the NFL is like a fantasy league they did not have something in place for an unprecedented event. So some fantasy leagues decided that they should just end the year as is no points and others went another method like use week 18 ect. To me the fairest thing was to use week 18 since all 4 teams involved now have something to play for no risk of Buf/Cin just laying down and sitting starters nor would Baltimore/NE sit their starters. Baltimore now having something to play for was the team most likely to have not cared being locked into a WC spot.
To me playing week 18 for the Cin/Buf guys in the lineups is the most fair to have a "real" winner but that is just me.
Other people can disagree and this may be a once in a lifetime event and it just so happened it was week 17 where we have this option of week 18 where if this had happened week 7 or 16 we can't use this option.
To each their own. The National sites can't use week 18 but they also don't run my leagues. MFL doesn't run my league. I run my league. I have to come up with a solution that is best for my league and then put it to a vote which is also tricky but what else can you do if you don't have a pre solution in place for a once in a lifetime event ?
That is what the NFL did they came up with a solution and had the 32 owners vote and it passed.
This is what fantasy leagues must do now and to just accept you got screwed you take a 0 doesn't seem like the best approach. That is just me though. You do you.
To me playing week 18 for the Cin/Buf guys in the lineups is the most fair to have a "real" winner but that is just me.
Other people can disagree and this may be a once in a lifetime event and it just so happened it was week 17 where we have this option of week 18 where if this had happened week 7 or 16 we can't use this option.
To each their own. The National sites can't use week 18 but they also don't run my leagues. MFL doesn't run my league. I run my league. I have to come up with a solution that is best for my league and then put it to a vote which is also tricky but what else can you do if you don't have a pre solution in place for a once in a lifetime event ?
That is what the NFL did they came up with a solution and had the 32 owners vote and it passed.
This is what fantasy leagues must do now and to just accept you got screwed you take a 0 doesn't seem like the best approach. That is just me though. You do you.
Capella
Footballguy
Yea, good fanbases too. Would suck. But as good as both of those teams are, it’s way more likely one loses before the afc title game.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I agree with you, but we both know that the league was making their decisions based on vibes and social media pressure.
In fairness, when the league wrote its rules regarding going by winning percentage, they were probably envisioning a situation in which it was simply not possible to continue play. For example, a tornado strikes the stadium, or the power grid fails and the stadium loses power. They weren't thinking about what happens when one team simply decides that they don't want to continue.
I wish the league would revisit that specific issue in the offseason and clarify that it's fine if you're too upset to play, but the result is a forfeit. With my economist hat on, I feel really good about such a rule. If a team feels that strongly about it and they're willing to accept the consequences, no problem. The harm from the injury follows the player, just like every other injury, and teams are given the correct incentives to either play on or call it a night. The way we're doing it now creates a situation where a team can stop playing and then negotiate the result on social media after the fact, usually with raw appeals to emotion. That should be shut down.
Grigs Allmoon
Footballguy
By all accounts, many Bengals players were pretty shaken up in the moment, as well. There's no evidence that it was only the Bills that wanted to quit playing that night.
That's why I'm completely against a forfeit in this situation.
Hypothetical... Had Damar not shown so much progress, or taken a turn for the worse, and the Bills players didn't want to play week 18, then yeah, a forfeit to New England would be in order.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
Back in the early days of the NFL, there wasn't a set, unified schedule for the entire league. Here is an example of the standings from 1923. There were 20 teams . . . and their total games played were 12, 12, 10, 12, 7, 12, 7, 12, 10, 8, 10, 8, 9, 7, 7, 8, 7, 11, 3, and 4. On top of that, back in those days, ties counted as "no contest" and were not considered as wins or losses (nowadays, they are considered 0.5 of a win and 0.5 of a loss). The point being, the league has used winning percentage to determine standings and seeding for 100 years. That became irrelevant once the teams all played the same number of games, but it's not like this situation wasn't addressed years ago.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Bengals players were shaken up (who wasn't?), but McDermott was very open about the fact the Bills players (captains) decided on their own not to continue.
Nobody thinks the Bills were gaming this situation. But we know with 100% certainty that if a rule can be gamed, it will be eventually. "If you don't want to continue, you take the loss" is a rule that is not open to gamesmanship, and it follows the normal procedure of making the team with the injured player deal with that player's loss. When Bills lost Von Miller for the year, they did not get to pick a HOF edge rusher off some other team's roster to replace him. They just had to deal with it and whatever consequences followed. We can do the exact same thing here.
jabarony
Footballguy
Oorang Indians got screwed out of the 1 pick. They had way more losses than the Brecks or the Jeffersons. Coach Jim Thorpe must have been livid.
Statorama
gangster
I remember riding "Sweet" Lou Smyth and his 7 TDs to a championship that year
Anarchy99
Footballguy
Going way off the rails, the first year that there are individual player records for was 1932. Future HOFer Arnie Herber led the league in passing with 639 yards, averaging 45 yards a game and completing 36% of his passes. In 13 seasons, he ended up with a passer rating of 50. We should all be thankful the game has advanced a lot since then.
It’s like you didn’t read the rest of that paragraph. I agree that the bills not controlling their own destiny for the 1 cancels out the bengals not controlling their destiny for the 2.
Can you explain why If the bengals lose to the ravens which makes them still a half game up on them there is a coin flip to decide home field for the playoff game but if the chiefs lose and the bengals win there is no coin flip to determine who is the 2 seed? The Bengals would be a half game behind the chiefs and both teams would have played an uneven number of games and the bengals beat the chiefs earlier in the season.
My only issue is with the coin flip in one scenario but not in the other when they are the same situation. Either have coin flips in both or neither.
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Grigs Allmoon
Footballguy
It sure is. One team could easily bluff to try to get the free win.
Suppose the Bengals players told Zac Taylor they weren't comfortable resuming the game. Then Zac goes over to Sean, thinking "If my guys don't want to play, surely his players don't want to play", and tells McDermott "Yeah, we're ready to resume after a warm-up. You want to, or do you want to forfeit?"
Could you not see someone like Urban Meyer doing something like that?
The Duff Man
Footballguy
This is a very inconsistent solution.
If you are picking neutral site for some conditions, and coin flip for others, that makes no sense. Pick one or the other as the resolution method, why both?
And why not include EVERY potential matchup that is impacted (as suggested above) such as CIN v BUf in round 2, that in theory would be played in BUF were it to happen.
I am fine with it as a Bills fan, I would be fine with a forfeit. Unfair to the Bengals.
If you are picking neutral site for some conditions, and coin flip for others, that makes no sense. Pick one or the other as the resolution method, why both?
And why not include EVERY potential matchup that is impacted (as suggested above) such as CIN v BUf in round 2, that in theory would be played in BUF were it to happen.
I am fine with it as a Bills fan, I would be fine with a forfeit. Unfair to the Bengals.
Anarchy99
Footballguy
I am not one of them, but there are some NE fans that wanted BUF to have to forfeit, as the Bills would be less inclined to play their starters in a must win game for NE. At this point, I am fine with the Pats not making the playoff rather then them sneaking in and getting crushed.
I think the argument for why there is not a coin flip for a potential bills-bengals game is because they will have played the same number of games. That sucks for the bengals but at least makes sense.
I cannot come up with a reason there is a coin flip for bengals-ravens but not one for a potential bengals-chiefs matchup.
Statorama
gangster
I can see a Saints player getting fined 300K for faking an injury
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
Yeah, but Herber was just a compiler. Not a HOFer.
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