As the sports world continues to shoot for a full restoration of Bills safety Damar Hamlin, the NFL remains faced with the task of finding viable avenues to complete its regular season schedule. According to a report, the number of main options is currently two.
The NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said Wednesday that the NFL is considering a pair of options for how to handle the postponement of Monday night’s game between Buffalo and Cincinnati.
The first and most likely option is to declare the match a draw or not. The second would send a ripple effect for the entire playoff slate.
“Another option – apparently a possibly more unlikely option, but an option nonetheless – is to move the playoffs back, play this game in week 19, eliminate the bye between the league games and the Super Bowl, and move on,” Rapoport told me. “That’s the kind of stuff the league talks about. I would expect some kind of announcement at some point soon.
As AND‘s Albert Breer noted in his Wednesday mailbag, Option No. 2 would present a whole host of hurdles to jump through, primarily the fact that every playoff team except the Bills and Bengals would receive essentially a bye before starting the playoffs, putting Buffalo and Cincinnati at a disadvantage. Option #1 would benefit the Chiefs by giving control over securing the #1 seed, an advantage that was previously held by the Bills.