The Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals will not resume their suspended Monday Night Football game, the league announced Thursday.
The game was still in the first quarter when Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field. After initially announcing a postponement of the game, the league cancelled it a few days later.
On Thursday evening, the NFL announced its solution to the lost game: a complicated group of scenarios that could mean the AFC Championship is held at a neutral site. A day later, the owners voted to confirmed the rule change.
So what does it all mean for the Jacksonville Jaguars? Absolutely nothing.
The winner of the Saturday night de facto AFC South championship game will still own the fourth seed in the AFC. If the Jaguars lose, they’ll still have a slim chance at sneaking into the playoffs as the seventh seed.
While the NFL has mapped out a few different paths to a neutral site game to crown the AFC champion, the Jaguars are not a part of those scenarios. If the Jaguars reached that round of the postseason, they would be the road team against a higher seed team and could host as the fourth seed against a wild card team.
While there were rumors of an eighth team being added to the playoffs from each conference, that potential change never got much traction.
The biggest loser in the changes made Friday are the Bengals with their Week 17 game now essentially counting the same as a loss for the team. But it’s business as usual for the Jaguars.