Damar Hamlin.Photo: Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire/Getty
The game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals has officially been canceled after Bills safetyDamar Hamlincollapsed and went into cardiac arrest during Monday’s match.
On Thursday, the NFL announced on its website that the “game will not be resumed.”
The league’s commissioner Roger Goodell first told the Bills, Bengals, and heads of the NFL Players Association before telling the rest of the NFL’s teams, the NFL said in its announcement.
He continued, “We are also incredibly appreciative of the amazing work of the medical personnel and commend each and every one of them.”
The league’s decision will not impact which teams get into the playoffs, it said.
In one case, “The AFC Championship Game will be played at a neutral site if the participating teams played an unequal number of games and both could have been the number one seed and hosted the game had all AFC clubs played a full 17-game regular season,” said the NFL.
In another case, if the Baltimore Ravens beats the Bengals in next week’s game, “it will have defeated Cincinnati, a divisional opponent, twice but will not be able to host a playoff game because Cincinnati will have a higher winning percentage for a 16-game schedule than Baltimore will for a 17-game schedule,” the NFL noted.
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Goodell added, “As we considered the football schedule, our principles have been to limit disruption across the league and minimize competitive inequities. I recognize that there is no perfect solution.”
The decision comes three days afterHamlin suffered cardiac arrestin the first quarter of the Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Medical teams resuscitated the second-year player on the field for more than 10 minutes.
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On Thursday morning, the Bills and Hamlin’s agent gave an update on his condition and said he “hasshown remarkable improvement,” but is “still critically ill.”
Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott said Thursday evening that Hamlin’s recovery is looking “very encouraging.”
“Damar’s doctors have been giving our doctors updates,” McDermott explained. “The news has been very encouragingat this point.”
McDermott said that Hamlin’s father spoke to the team on Wednesday. “His message was: the team needs to get back to focusing on the goals that they had set for themselves,” he said. “Damar would have wanted it that way.”
source: people.com
