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As Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in a statement released on Thursday, “there is no perfect solution” to the cancellation of the Bills-Bengals game. However, the NFL Member Club Policy Manual, Game Operations 2022 Edition, has already considered the imperfect process that applies when a game is canceled.
Playoff placement is determined by win percentages.
This applies to any cancellation of a game, be it week one or week 18 or any week in between. The Bills-Bengals game has indeed been cancelled. The league previously created a specific rule that applies to game cancellations.
Fair or not, that’s the rule. The NFL is now proposing to owners an impromptu rule change. For this reason, during the season 24 owners must agree to this adaptation to the protocol in force.
The Bengals, one of the teams directly affected by the proposal that owners will vote on Friday, have stressed the point.
“The proper process for rule changes occurs during the offseason,” executive vice president Katie Blackburn wrote in an ESPN.com memo. “It is not appropriate to allow teams to vote for something that could create bias, favor one team over another, or affect their own situation when the voting is taking place immediately before the playoffs.”
The mere fact that a game is canceled for whatever reason is highly unusual. That hasn’t happened in a year without a strike since 1935. Whether due to weather, illness or injury or other extraordinary factors that would prevent a game, the league has already determined the approach to be used.
Honestly, this should have been easy. It shouldn’t have taken several days to figure it out. It shouldn’t have required memos and meetings and talks and backroom deals and efforts to toss grains of rice on the two sides of the scale to even out possible injustices. The rule is the rule. If a game is called off, playoff placement will be determined by win percentage, with no neutral sides or coin tosses or other suggestions discussed, voiced or considered, from the addition of an eighth team to take advantage of an unfairly obtained bye neutralize probably crazy idea that if the Chiefs beat the Raiders on Saturday they would have to choose between a week off or home field advantage in an AFC championship against the Bills or Bengals.
The league can now claim that the various possibilities that were discussed or raised or considered were in fact none. The truth is that no other possibilities should be considered since there is already a rule that provides the answer to the question.
Instead, on Friday, owners will consider the extremely extraordinary move of changing the rules DURING a season. Time and time again, in the more than two decades of PFT’s existence, it has been stated that rules deemed inappropriate or unfair would not be changed during the season. At tomorrow’s vote, owners must realize how unprecedented the move they would be taking is.
Frankly, the currently proposed approach falls squarely into the catch-up-as-we-go category. If the league wanted the flexibility to craft an outcome based on the specific facts of a particular case (as they are doing here), the rules would allow for that. They don’t.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the right decision or the best of several bad options. There’s a rule in the books. Owners will consider changing this rule mid-season.
You obviously have the power to do so. But everyone needs to understand what that means. Set, codified rules don’t matter during a given season when 24 owners suddenly decide they don’t matter anymore. Owners must be willing to cross that Rubicon when voting on the proposals they will be considering on Friday.
It doesn’t matter that the competition committee voted in favor of the proposed change. Owners may and do reject proposals from the Competitions Committee during the off-season.
Nor does it matter that some teams harbor resentment (and they do) for Bengals owner Mike Brown, who has a habit of voting against proposals that the vast majority of other clubs agree with. Some might be tempted to “pin” it on Brown, approving a rule that even if the Bengals have a better win percentage than the Ravens, a Baltimore head-to-head sweep would result in a coin toss around the home field to determine. when the two teams compete in the wild card round.
The league often justifies issuing penalties by arguing that a team’s or individual’s actions undermine the integrity of the game and public confidence in professional football. Before ignoring previously established rules in favor of something that seems to better account for a certain set of facts, owners need to ask themselves if this action in and of itself undermines the integrity of the game and/or the public’s trust in professional football .
Again, they can do whatever at least 24 of them want. But they need to be aware of the broader impact of what they would be doing.
Once that starts, where does it stop? Would the owners change the rules regarding roughing the passer during a season? Would they make a 15-yard penalty out of the pass and not a spot foul during a season? Would you change the overtime rules during a season?
This isn’t about fairness or unfairness to the Chiefs, Bills, Ravens or Bengals. It’s about whether the rules in the books stay in the books until the end of a given season. If the rules change during a particular season, it might change everything.