CINCINNATI (AP) — Joe Mixon and the Cincinnati Bengals were still flipping out Sunday over the NFL’s plan to determine home-field advantage in the playoffs.
Mixon mocked the NFL’s decision to use a coin flip as a tiebreaker Sunday by celebrating a 1-yard touchdown run against the Baltimore Ravens by taking a coin out of his glove and flicking it. He and several teammates then kicked it on the ground.
The league decided to add a coin flip to settle a potential playoff scenario after Monday night’s game between the Bengals and Buffalo Bills was declared a no-contest when Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field.
Under the NFL’s ruling, if Baltimore beat AFC North champion Cincinnati on Sunday and the two teams ended up playing each other in the first round of the playoffs, a coin flip would be used to determine the home team.
“So we not following the rules no more,” Mixon wrote Thursday about the coin-flip resolution, sharing screen grabs of the league’s game operations manual, which note that if games are canceled, playoff standings are to be determined using the final records from the games that were played.
Cincinnati’s 27-16 win made the coin flip proposal irrelevant. The Bengals (12-4) will host the Ravens (10-7) next weekend in an AFC wild-card game
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