By Jacob Calvin Meyer - The Washington Times - Monday, January 9, 2023

For the first time since 1935, an NFL regular season has ended without every team playing the same number of games.

Last week, the NFL canceled the Bills-Bengals game and declared it a “no contest” after Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and went into cardiac arrest. Hamlin spent the past week in critical condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, but the 24-year-old safety was released from the hospital Monday and flown to a Buffalo hospital, where treatment will continue. 

The final week of the season was still an emotional one — with some players and coaches wearing “Love for Damar” T-shirts and Buffalo returner Nyheim Hines taking the opening kickoff back for a touchdown to lead the Bills to victory. 

At the same time, though, ending an NFL season with an uneven number of games — and the way the league chose to handle the unprecedented situation — has introduced complications for the playoffs. 

The team most impacted by the cancellation was Buffalo. The Bills entered Week 17 as the No. 1 seed in the AFC with control of their own fate. If Buffalo defeated Cincinnati and then took care of business against New England in Week 18 — the latter of which the team did do, winning 35-23 on Sunday — then the Bills would have clinched a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. 

But since the NFL standings are decided by winning percentage — a rule in place mostly to account for ties — the Kansas City Chiefs (14-3) will be the AFC’s top seed over No. 2 Buffalo (13-3). That makes Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs the team that benefited the most from the canceled game.

However, the league did implement a wrinkle into this year’s postseason to help balance the scales between the Chiefs and Bills. With the decision to cancel the Bills-Bengals game and with Kansas City defeating Las Vegas on Saturday, the NFL couldn’t find a way to give Buffalo a chance to still be the No. 1 seed. Therefore, the Bills lost out on the chance at a first-round bye (and will have to host No. 7 Miami in the wild card round), but that doesn’t mean they’ll have to play in an opponent’s stadium this offseason. 

If the Bills and Chiefs meet in the AFC Championship game, the contest will not be played at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Instead, it will be played at a neutral site as a way to avoid penalizing the Bills for playing one fewer game than the Chiefs during the regular season. 

“We can do it in a McDonald’s parking lot,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid joked after his team clinched the No. 1 seed in Saturday’s win. 

The other two teams impacted by the cancellation were the Bengals and Ravens — two AFC North foes who played each other Sunday. 

Before kickoff of the Bills-Bengals game in Week 17, the Ravens had a chance at winning the AFC North and being the No. 3 seed if the Bengals lost to the Bills and the Ravens defeated Cincinnati in Week 18. The Bengals also had the chance to be the No. 2 seed had they defeated the Bills and Ravens.

But once the Buffalo-Cincinnati game was canceled, so too were the Ravens’ division title hopes and the Bengals’ No. 2 seed aspirations.

To attempt to solve those imbalances, the NFL put in place a strange provision prior to Week 18 that involved a potential coin flip to determine where a playoff game would be played. Had Baltimore defeated Cincinnati in Week 18 and if the two teams were set to play each other in the wild-card round, the site of that contest would have been determined by a coin flip. 

Bengals players and coach Zac Taylor bemoaned the adjustment by the NFL leading up to the Week 18 contest.

“As far as I’m concerned, we just want the rules to be followed,” Taylor told reporters last week. “When a game is canceled, you just turn to winning percentage to clarify everything so we don’t have to make up rules.”

But it didn’t come to a coin flip. Baltimore rested several starters Sunday, and Cincinnati dispatched the Ravens by 11 points. 

Bengals running back Joe Mixon snuck a coin into his glove and flipped it during a touchdown celebration, and Cincinnati cornerback Eli Apple took a picture with a large coin that had NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s face with a clown nose on it. The third-seeded Bengals and sixth-seeded Ravens are now set to play each other again on Sunday night, but no coin flip was needed for the game to be played in Cincinnati.

“I just had to figure out where I would be able to put the coin,” Mixon joked after the game. 

Across the league last week, the focus was on Hamlin and his recovery more so than how the NFL would attempt to solve an impossible puzzle. Nevertheless, the provisions the league implemented are alterations to the rules in the middle of the season — something that rarely, if ever, happens in the NFL. 

“Changing the rules in midstream does open up the proverbial Pandora’s box,” NBC Sports’ Peter King said on “ProFootballTalk.” 

“It’s something that can be used in the future in other situations. I just think in this one I do understand the exception that’s being made and I don’t get particularly outraged by it.”

• Jacob Calvin Meyer can be reached at jmeyer@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Please read our comment policy before commenting.