The NFL has come under intense scrutiny for the way that it handled the game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals. 

In one of the more worrying scenes that we have seen on a football field in some time, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest whilst making a routine tackle of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins in the first quarter of their game on Monday Night Football.

The game was stopped in the first quarter whilst Hamlin received treatment on the field and it wasn’t until over an hour after the incident and even after he was revived on the field there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding what would happen next.

At one stage the players were even informed that the game would continue and that they would have a five-minute warm-up period before the game would resume on the night before the decision was ultimately made that the game would be postponed until further notice.

NFL has it taken out of their hands

Obviously in such a rare incident, there was a lot of confusion over who was in control of the situation. Would it be down to the respective teams to continue playing, was it the officials who would have the final say or would the incident go all the way to the top with commissioner Roger Goodell?

As pointed out on Twitter by reporter Don Van Natta Jr., incidents like this ultimately land with the latter and the decision on whether to postpone or cancel the game comes down to Goodell:

However, whilst common sense prevailed in the end, the fact that it took so long for a decision to be made and there was a possibility of the game carrying on with players receiving a five-minute ‘warm up’ period brought a hail of criticism the league’s way, with Bills and Bengals head coaches Sean McDermott and Zac Taylor receiving praise for the way that they handled the matter:

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In the league’s defense, given the rarity of something like this and the timing of it in the season did make it hard to come up with a decision (obviously it’s not the most important factor, but it does need consideration, if this was in Week 1 with room to play the game again, it would have been different). 

And at least common sense came through in the end, which at the end of the day is all that we can ask for.