The NFL's playoff format had to be tweaked a bit for the 2023 edition in response to the cancellation of the Bills vs. Bengals Week 17 game.Buffalo and Cincinnati were supposed to play one another on "Monday Night Football" and the game began without i sue. However, Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest during the first quarter and had to be resuscitated on the field as players watched in horror.The game was suspended and ultimately canceled because there was too little time left in the season for the teams to make up the contest.The Bengals and the Bills were both in the thick of the AFC playoff race and were in the running for the No. 1 seed. As a result, the NFL had to enact some contingencies for the postseason which includes a potential neutral-site AFC Championship Game among other resolutions.There wasn't, however, a move to Steve McNair Jersey play the Bills vs. Bengals game at a neutral site. The higher-seeded team D'Onta Foreman Jersey in this case, Buffalo will still be able to host the contest as it normally would even despite the minor changes to the playoff structure.MORE NFL PLAYOFFS: | |Why did the NFL make that decision? Here's what to know about the Bills vs. Bengals game and why there is only one po sible neutral-site playoff game that could be played before Super Bowl 57. Bills vs. Bengals is being played in Buffalo because the Bills finished the season with a better record than the Bengals. They ended the year with a 13-3 record while the Bengals finished 12-4.Obviously, that both teams were unable to play one game resulted in some complications for the AFC playoff picture. Those, in particular, were how the league would compare the Chiefs' record to that of the Bills and Bengals.Butas NFL vice president of broadcast planning Michael North explained, it was much easier to compare the records of Cincinnati and Buffalo."The fact that Buffalo and Cincy never got played, they're going to have a different number of games played relative to Kansas City," before Super Wild David Long Jr. Jersey Card Weekend.But when it comes to Buffalo and Cincinnati playing each other potentially in the divisional round of the playoffs, they played the same number of games they've both played 16 games. So there wasn't really a conversation about a coin flip relative to the host site. We'll let that play out on the field this weekend.That ruling makes sense. Still, it has drawn the ire of Bengals fans who know that the team would have had home-field advantage over the Bills had they won their unplayed Week 17 contest against Buffalo.Alas, the NFL believed it was fairest to allow the Bills to host the game, thoughNFLcompetition committee chairman Rich McKay said there was consideration for a Buffalo-Cincinnati neutral site game."That was discu sed at length on the call today amongst ownership," McKay said.But ultimately, the NFL decided that a neutral site game would only potentially be nece sary for the AFC Championship Game given this year's unique circumstances. But even still, that would only apply to a couple of teams within the conference.POWER RANKINGS: Only one of the potential AFC Championship Game matchups will be played at a neutral site. That will occur if the Bills and the Chiefs are the final two teams standing in the AFC bracket.Why is this the only game that would be played at a neutral site? It's because the Bills (13-3) Jordan Roos Jersey could have potentially tied the Chiefs (14-3) for the AFC's No. 1 seed had their canceled game been played. The Bills owned the tiebreaker over the Chiefs thanks to a head-to-head victory over them so it's entirely plausible that they could have won Derrick Henry T Shirts the conference's No. 1 seed.As such, the NFL felt that it was unfair to, e sentially, penalize the Bills for having a win-lo s disparity solely based on a canceled game. That led the league to consider the neutral site alternative, and Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium was chosen as the potential host for that matchup, as it is roughly equidistant from Buffalo and Kansas City.MORE: That said, any other AFC Championship Game matchup would be played at the home of the higher-seeded team. So, for example, if the Chiefs play the Bengals, that game would be at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Or if the Bills play the Jaguars, that game would be played at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y.So, it's entirely po sible that the neutral site championship game isn't needed.