The league and everyone involved will remain focused on Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s status
By Scott Thompson
After Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, suffered a cardiac arrest on Monday night during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the NFL has banded together as a brotherhood to support him and his family.
The NFL must decide how it will proceed with the remainder of the regular season schedule and the upcoming playoffs while everyone involved, from commissioner Roger Goodell to the fans, is praying that Hamlin will emerge from this injury unharmed.
Although changing this isn’t the league’s top priority right now, it is necessary given the playoff implications of the Bills-Bengals game before it was postponed.
One-time NFL MVP and current WFAN radio personality Boomer Esiason gave his theory on the matter, saying the NFL could move Week 18 back and have no games this upcoming weekend to make up for the postponement.
“As far as the NFL’s concerned, everybody is focused on Damar; that’s the most important thing, that’s what I’ve been told,” Esiason said on his “Boomer & Gio” show Tuesday.
“I do know that the weekend between the Super Bowl and the championship games, that is sitting there open, that’s a chance that everything will take that weekend into account, and maybe there will not be that week between the AFC Championship game … they may use that week as championship weekend.”
Esiason added that the only way Week 18 would be pushed back is if wild-card weekend for the NFL, which begins Jan. 14, would be moved as well.
“I would think the way that would work, if it did, would mean there would be no games this weekend,” Esiason explained. “And then maybe Cincinnati and Buffalo will restart next Monday. That’s possible because there’s no Monday night game.”
Of course, this is only a theory, but one that the NFL could be thinking about down the road.
“Everything’s on the table,” Esiason said.
In the end, Esiason said the league’s solution is “not going to please everybody.”
Either way, the season will be finished. But the league, its teams and everyone else will remain focused on Hamlin.
