Is The NFL's Post-Season Decision Fair?
After Damar Hamlin's Injury, The NFL reached a plan for the NFL Post-season
The new year brought a new shock to the system for football fans around the world and even those of us here at NFL 33. Thankfully, Hamlin is recovering, awake and communicating with his teammates.
Still, the NFL needed a plan.
In the wake of the injury to Damar Hamlin, questions have needed to be asked. First, the game in which he was injured between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills has been canceled, meaning there will be no outcome for either team in that contest. They will each play effectively a 16-game season, while the rest of the AFC field will play a 17-game season.
The central challenge had been the resolution of how the post-season could move forward. No solution could be perfect, but as a league and for the Teams, coaches, players and fans, it has to maximize one thing: competitive equity. It had to be as fair as it could be.
No plan is perfect.
“all teams will retain their seeding as determined by the regular season winning percentage throughout the playoffs and for other competitive determinations.”
NFL 2023 Resolution G-1
Today the NFL made an imperfect but crucial plan for the NFL Post-season. Teams will be seeded by their winning percentage, and if the AFC championship has a team that could have been the top seed had that game been completed, the game will be moved to a neutral site. Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL league office will determine that site if this scenario plays out.
If the AFC's top three teams all finish with a week 18 victory, the final seedings will be:
The Buffalo Bills can force the AFC championship game to be played on a neutral field by making it to the AFCCG game. Otherwise, the AFC path to the Super Bowl runs through Kansas City, including the AFC championship game.
No plan is perfect, and in the end, neither is this one.
However, this is as close as it can get, given the circumstances. The Bills will not have to play an AFC Championship Game in Kansas City in 2023. The Bengals will not have to beat the Bills twice to get to the Super Bowl. And the Chiefs will not host the AFC Championship Game against the Bills, although they will reap the benefits of a first-round bye.
This is as good a plan as any in this one-of-a-kind post-season.
It feels like this is the best decision the NFL could make while also keeping the Buffalo Bills top of mind. With context of the traumatic event, I can see how the majority of owners agreed and felt it was appropriate to ratify the decision.
Competitively, there’s no way around the fact that the NFL, and particularly Cincinnati, is ceding ~some~ competitive advantage in the direction of Buffalo, New York. Absent compassion and empathy the proper decision was to follow the rules as written and seed the playoffs based on win percentage regardless of number of games played. In this instance, compassion and empathy were appropriately applied. Sometimes you pick a brother up, even if you like to fight them on the weekends.
While the impact to Cincinnati could and likely should have been reduced, with the playoffs rapidly approaching there was no better way to move forward without tasking Buffalo to carry the brunt of this trauma alone.
buffalo was going to lose that game if the tragic accident was not critical like that earlier they lost a player to a head injury two out of their secondary would have doomed them specially since their star cb could not keep up with chase on several plays earlier