BillsFanSD

"Forfeit" is one type of cancellation though.

This is too complicated and heavy-handed. Far simpler to cancel and figure out a solution.

I think I would prefer every solution that involves cancelling last night's game vs. every solution that involves rescheduling it. I mean, the worst case scenario is that we get stuck with a forfeit. That's preferable to trying to make up the game IMO. I guess if we made up the game, won it, and got the #1 seed that would be the best outcome for us, but the Bengals would rightly feel disadvantaged by having to play multiple games on short rest heading into the wild card round. I wouldn't want that either. As hard as it is to take our "fan" hats off, I don't think that making up this game is something anybody would be pick if we were making this call in the offseason and didn't know the teams or stakes involved.

I'm starting to come around to the view that the fairest outcome is just to determine last night's outcome by coin flip. Any other solution is going to feel (rightly or wrongly) as having been engineered to advantage certain teams. "Coin flip" doesn't require reworking any schedules or squeezing in a makeup game, and it removes human decisionmakers from determining the outcome.

I gained a lot of respect for Taylor and the Bengals organization last night. They did the right thing and handled a difficult situation with class. We all know there are teams in the NFL that would not have done it this way. Glad to see the Bengals aren't among them.

Yeah, "win percentage" isn't a very good solution here. That just hands the #1 seed to a team that lost to both of last night's teams. That's dumb. Deciding the game by a coin flip would be more fair.

Come on, man. Nobody thought anything of the score at the time of Hamlin's injury. The game had barely even started.

This isn't about how best to honor Damar Hamlin. It's about finding a solution for the rest of the season that 32 teams will consider reasonably equitable. It may be that the fairest, most equitable solution is to treat it as a Bills forfeit. That's not the outcome that I'm hoping for, but it's not like it throws the universe out of alignment or anything -- it's the same outcome as if we had just lost a tough game to a good opponent.

When you think through how this would work, I honestly think taking a forfeit is "better" for the Bills than trying to make up this game. I'd rather just have the #2 or #3 seed than have to play another game with multiple quick turnarounds.

Nobody is disrespecting anybody. We're just thinking through how to navigate an unprecedented situation with as little unfairness as possible. Getting all emotional doesn't help.

I was thinking about this last night while trying to sleep. Giving both teams a win seems like a pretty fair solution to me. The Bengals and Bills are both made no worse off, and KC doesn't unjustly benefit. The league could (if it wanted to -- this is fine with me) specify that Cincinnati gets a H2H tiebreaker over the Bills so that next week's games are still meaningful for everyone. We would still need to take care of NE to get the #1 seed. Really though, I don't think there's a solution that will be universally regarded as fair. Lots of solutions that would be equitable for BUF and/or CIN in isolation are grossly inequitable for KC. It would be very easy to stumble into a "solution" that basically just hands Kansas City the #1 seed despite losing to both competing teams. If I were a Chiefs fan, I would not be comfortable with that outcome considering how we got there.

Why would Bills players still be at the stadium?

Yeah, this is a huge national story right now.

Agreed. The bottom line is that everybody landed on the right decision within 45 minutes or so. That's actually pretty good.

Everett almost died. He was saved from paralysis by an experimental medical procedure that involved something like pumping frozen liquid into his veins. I don't to mean to be all dramatic or downplay what's happening with Hamlin, which is obviously also extremely bad. But that was genuinely gruesome too.

Yeah, this reminds me exactly of Kevin Everett.

Poor Sam Darnold. What an awful time to fumble.

I'm holding out for the NC-17 sequel about Zach Wilson.

Can we have just one week where people kindly STFU about Isaiah Hodgins? Go put it in some other thread.

Mac Jones gets routinely sacked on plays that guys like Allen and Mahomes routinely extend into first downs.

The New England Patriots, who famously never benefit from questionable officiating.

Also, it would be nice to keep New England's playoff hopes alive so we can end their season next week for a second year in a row. I'm petty that way. Worked out great IMO.

Really looking forward to watching MIA-NE for a three hour meditation on how lucky we are to have a real QB.

Remember during the drought, how every time they put the Bills on prime time, you could pretty well expect that we would not only lose, but disgrace ourselves in the process? Now our team actually plays its best football on national broadcasts. Not that we win every game of course, but even our losses tend to be the sort of losses that makes neutrals think more highly of our team, like last year's playoff game against KC. It's wonderful.

It is not at all surprising that players around the NFL do not respect Mac Jones or Zach Wilson. Those guys are both losers, albeit for different reasons. Their teammates know it, and players on other teams definitely know it. And Tua seems like the kind of player that edge rushers would love to see on a weekly basis -- he can't extend plays and can't throw off-platform, after all.