Bengals coach Zac Taylor, RB Joe Mixon push back on the NFL’s postseason seeding solution

The fallout from Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s near-fatal medical emergency has had a major and unprecedented impact on the top of the AFC. With Thursday night’s announcement that the Bills’ Week 17 game against the Cincinnati Bengals would not be restarted, a resolution affecting the start of the AFC playoffs and home-field advantage was subsequently revealed and passed to on friday.

As part of the deal, the Bengals will be the AFC North champions because of their superior winning percentage, even though they will have played one less game than the Baltimore Ravens. However, if the Ravens defeat the Bengals in their Week 18 matchup to give both teams 11 wins, and if the two teams meet again on Wild Card Weekend, their playoff berth will be determined by a coin toss. overseen by Roger Goodell.

For the Bengals, the implication is that even with a division title in hand, there’s a chance they could be denied home-field advantage and have to travel to Baltimore to start the playoffs — a scenario the club and members of the his. do not hesitate to share their problems with.

In a tweet, Bengals defensive end Joe Mixon called out the NFL for not following its own rule, specifically citing the “Competitive Policy for Canceled Games” section of the league’s 2022 policy manual.

Mixon was not alone in his complaints. According to ESPN, Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn, who is on the NFL’s competition committee, urged the committee to vote against the proposal based on the timing of a departure from the winning percentage standard outlined for the scenario the NFL now faces.

“The proper process to make a rule change (sic) is in the offseason,” Blackburn wrote. “It is not appropriate for teams to be put in a position to vote on something that could be biased, favor one team over another or affect their standing when voting takes place immediately before the playoffs.”

Meanwhile, while Bengals head coach Zac Taylor emphasized that the Bengals can control their own destiny and make a playoff run with a win this weekend, he also expressed anger at how the NFL’s resolution was reached and how it affected in his team.

“As far as I’m concerned, we just want the rules to be followed and when a game is called off, you just have to go back to the winning percentage to clear everything up so we don’t have to make the rules,” Taylor said. “There have been a few occasions this season where the club has been fined or people in our building have been fined and we are told to follow the rules. It is black and white in the regulations.

“So now, when we point out the rules and you’re told we’re going to change it, I don’t want to hear about fair and equal when that’s the case… Lost opportunities for us who had a chance to check that now not, good. But it seems there are positives for many teams and only negatives for us.”

In a statement from Goodell, the commissioner acknowledged that “there is no perfect solution,” emphasizing how their guiding principles had been to limit disruption across the league and minimize competitive disparities.