CLUBS TO CONSIDER
NEUTRAL SITE AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
The NFL announced today that the Week 17
Buffalo Bills at Cincinnati Bengals game will not be resumed and has been
cancelled.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell informed
all clubs of his decision earlier today, after speaking with the Bills, the Bengals
and NFL Players Association leadership.
“This has been a very difficult week,”
Goodell said. “We continue to focus on the recovery of Damar Hamlin and are
encouraged by the improvements in his condition as well as the tremendous
outpouring of support and care for Damar and his family from across the country.
We are also incredibly appreciative of
the amazing work of the medical personnel and commend each and every one of
them.”
Among the key factors in arriving at
this decision:
- Not
playing the Buffalo-Cincinnati game to its conclusion will have no effect on
which clubs qualify for the postseason. No club would qualify for the
postseason and no club will be eliminated based on the outcome of this game.
- It
would require postponing the start of the playoffs for one week, thereby affecting
all 14 clubs that qualify for postseason play.
- Making
the decision prior to Week 18 is consistent with our competitive principles and
enables all clubs to know the playoff possibilities prior to playing the final
weekend of regular season games.
Cancelling the game between the Bills
and Bengals creates potential competitive inequities in certain playoff
scenarios. In an effort to mitigate those inequities, NFL clubs will consider tomorrow
in a Special League Meeting a resolution recommended by the Commissioner and
approved today by the Competition Committee, consisting of two elements:
1. The AFC Championship Game will be
played at a neutral site if the participating teams played an unequal number of
games and both could have been the number one seed and hosted the game had all
AFC clubs played a full 17-game regular season. Those circumstances involve
Buffalo or Cincinnati qualifying for the game as a road team and are listed
below:
Scenario
1
Buffalo and
Kansas City both win or both tie – a Buffalo vs Kansas City championship game
would be at a neutral site.
Scenario
2
Buffalo and
Kansas City both lose and Baltimore wins or ties – a Buffalo vs Kansas City
championship game would be at a neutral site.
Scenario
3
Buffalo and
Kansas City both lose and Cincinnati wins – a Buffalo or Cincinnati vs Kansas
City championship game would be at a neutral site.
2. If Baltimore defeats Cincinnati in
Week 18 it will have defeated Cincinnati, a divisional opponent, twice but will
not be able to host a playoff game because Cincinnati will have a higher
winning percentage for a 16-game schedule than Baltimore will for a 17-game
schedule.
If Baltimore defeats Cincinnati and
if those two clubs are scheduled to play a Wild Card game against one another,
the site for that game would be determined by a coin toss. If Cincinnati wins
the Week 18 game or if Baltimore and Cincinnati are not scheduled to play one
another in the Wild Card round, the game sites would be determined by the regular
scheduling procedures.
“As we considered the football schedule,
our principles have been to limit disruption across the league and minimize
competitive inequities,” Goodell said. “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.”