Report: Bengals, Bills Canceled Monday Night Football Game, Not NFL

Finger pointing continues as sides dig in on the return to play debate.

Author:
Russ Heltman
Publish date:
Jan 10, 2023 7:48 AM EST

In this story:

CINCINNATI — A new ESPN report just revealed that the Bengals and Bills, not the league stood firm to cancel last week's game amidst Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest.

According to Don Van Natta Jr., the NFL wanted the game to keep going despite multiple stances over the past week that thoughts like that are "insensitive."

"The Lord himself could come down, and we were not going to play again," a high-ranking official from one of the teams told ESPN. "She [NFL chief football administrator Dawn Aponte] was getting pressure. She was not getting consistent and direct messaging that she deserved to receive."

Aponte was the mediator between team leaders at the stadium and the NFL in New York.

She was reportedly "caught between two teams that didn't want to play and league officials inside the command center, led by NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent, who left open that possibility for nearly an hour."

Vincent adamantly told reporters last week that he "was the one ... that was communicating with the commissioner. It never crossed our mind to talk about warming up to resume play. That's ridiculous. That's insensitive, and that's not a place that we should ever be in."

Yet, the anonymous official is telling a completely different story.

"The league did not cancel the game," the team official said. "The Bills and the Bengals canceled the game."

On the broadcast, ESPN's Joe Buck said multiple times that play would eventually resume. The league told his colleague, ESPN rules analyst John Parry, that the game would resume.

"If what I said on national TV with the eyes of the world watching was wrong in the view of the league, I would have been corrected—immediately," Buck said. "And I was not."

The two sides are dug in, and it appears unlikely anyone admits they were the ones pushing one way or another. Regardless, Hamlin is thankfully in good condition and continues to recover in a Buffalo hospital.

Check out the full ESPN story here.

Cincinnati and Baltimore run it back in the Wild Card round on Sunday at 8:15 p.m. ET. The game is available on NBC via fuboTV—start your free trial here.

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