BillsFanSD

This probably won't happen, but intentionally throwing a playoff berth to New England only to blow them out the following week would be a much-needed moment of levity for all of us. That's a troll job that would go down in history in AFCE lore, since it humiliates the Patriots and bones the Dolphins. All we need to do is figure out how to TP Robert Salah's house and we'd have the trifecta.

Really, they should re-do the NFC bracket with Philly, San Francisco, Dallas, and Minnesota and then give them the Jets, Steelers, Patriots, and Titans. That's a better bracket than the slop the B-conference is putting out there.

Also, had we lost to the Bengals, we would be staring down the barrel of the #3 seed. It would depend on this weekend's games of course, but that would have been the modal outcome. Taking the 2 seed is a reasonable compromise IMO. Could have been better, could have been worse, and we'll never know.

Wait, what? McDaniel is the whitest white guy to ever white.

If you think the NFL did the right thing by suspending the game, then you have to accept that the Bills are either going to be given something they haven't earned or be punished for something that was outside their control. There's no other option.

I have a low opinion of McDaniel as a person, but he's a good coach. Miami should definitely fire him.

I'm chuckling at the prospect of what an "epic beatdown" looks like considering how the playoff game went last year. I feel like this is somehow going to end with the Patriots bus being set ablaze or something.

Oh. Well, in that case, the decision probably isn't going to left up to the Bills, nor should it be IMO. There are too many other teams affected, and everybody's had a reasonable chance to compose themselves. I'm just some random guy on a message board, but I would expect to take a forfeit if we didn't play this weekend for some reason.

It also helps that New England just isn't a particularly good team. I honestly think we could simply go with the exact same game plan from last time and win a pretty straightforward contest. The team's mental state is really the only unknown variable here. The talent gap is large and known.

I was talking about the Patriots game, not the Bengals game. Sorry about that -- I should have clarified since this is still the "Bengals game" thread.

Well, there's no (good) reason why the Bills shouldn't play this weekend. Sean Taylor, etc. I'm admittedly dismissing this possibility out of hand, as I think everyone should. Today is fine. Dragging it out absolutely does impact the league -- the NFL's decision has a direct and immediate effect on the Bills, Bengals, and Chiefs, and it has various indirect effects on the Ravens, Dolphins, Patriots, and maybe the Jaguars but they probably truck Tennessee this weekend anyway and it won't matter for them. And maybe the Steelers, possibly. It's not an exaggeration to say that it affects the entire AFC playoff bracket, which kicks off in 9 days. But yeah a decision today is totally okay. I was criticizing a post about waiting to make a decision until after week 18 is played out, which is what I'm objecting to.

Great news coming from the physicians treating him. Very glad to hear this, obviously.

Hopefully people in the league office are also being a little more forward-looking and thinking about whether they're also going to postpone games in the future when (a) a player is paralyzed on the field, (b) a player is killed in car accident, (c) a player is murdered in his home, (d) a position coach dies of a massive heart attack, etc. They obviously didn't think any of this stuff through when they postponed the game on Monday night, but that was understandable because they had to make a snap decision under pressure. There's no excuse for poor foresight now.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm very active on another football-related forum where three different doctors have provided extensive commentary on this injury and the general prognosis for somebody of Hamlin's age who suffered this injury and received X treatment at Y time, etc. All three of them were optimistic about Hamlin's survival, but they all completely disregarded the "making progress" thing and one became significantly more pessimistic due to the lack of any specifics. What I mean by that is that families often interpret basic reflex reactions as "making progress" when in fact they are very negative signs. Again, I'm not qualified to discuss this in anything resembling detail and for all I know Hamlin actually is improving. Just passing it along.

Yep. And besides, the purpose of the injury report is so that both teams are fairly informed about each player's game availability and fitness. Everybody knows about Damar Hamlin. (I know the person who raised this issue was just asking out curiosity and this is maybe a little pedantic, but nobody can seriously accuse the Bills of trying to slip one past the Patriots. They know that Hamlin won't be out there on Sunday.)

Honestly, who cares? All three of those alternatives probably result in KC getting the #1 seed. The only difference is that a loss/forfeit gives us (probably) the #3 seed instead of #2. That's not that big a deal. I mean, yeah, it matters, but it shouldn't be a deal-breaker under the circumstances.

This is 100% bush league. A basic, fundamental principle of decision-making in competitive situations is that you have a rule that everybody knows up front, and you follow it. Waiting to see how things shake out and then backwards-engineering a rule based on the results is the exact opposite of what we should expect from middle schoolers, let alone professional adults running a multi-billion dollar business.

This seems like an odd thing to say under the circumstances, but I don't people fully grasp the severity of this injury. We won't even know if Hamlin is going to survive until later today or tomorrow. But that's just one part of it. His long-term prognosis is 100% totally up in the air. He could play for the Bills next year, or he may never live independently ever again. We won't find that out for a long time. Certainly not by this weekend.

Probably IR.

Maybe, but this is a childish way of doing it. All of us know or should know that Hamlin's health and the league calendar are completely independent of each other. There's no good reason to coddle people who don't understand that. (Honestly, the constant need to accommodate the dumbest among us is one of the main sources of my frustration with modern culture).

This is one of about a dozen solutions that are perfectly reasonable. At this point, the league needs to just pick one and be done with it. This is one of those times when it's much better to make a good-enough decision quickly than make a perfect decision later. It's stupid and unprofessional to let this hang out there.

Okay fair enough. My apologies for the expletive.

You quoted me.

My parents and I got back in the car and went our way, which was to one of my college visits four hours down the road. Dial it back a little with your own sense of importance. Seriously, you're right that it's not the biggest deal in the world. Give the Bills a loss and just move on, no problem. I'm tired of twenty-somethings explaining the deep secrets of life to me. Get bent and enjoy your own old age when you'll come around.

I doubt that too. Professional football players are human beings, just like you and me. Very adults would be wiling to say "I know you saw somebody on fire from a car accident, but my trauma is worse than yours." Like, not a soul would say that.