What the Bills-Bengals postponement means for the Ravens in Week 18

Week 17’s matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills was postponed on Monday and will not resume this week. Here’s what it means for the Ravens.

Following Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s collapse in the first quarter, the Bengals-Bills game was postponed until further notice. The league released an update stating that the game will not be replayed this week, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, and that the Week 18 schedule remains the same, meaning the Ravens will still play the Bengals on Sunday.

There’s still no official announcement on what time the Ravens game will take place; prior to the postponement, the Ravens would have played in the 1 p.m. ET window if the Bengals beat the Bills and the 4:25 p.m. ET window if the Bengals lost.

It will mark Baltimore’s season finale but will not decide the AFC North as the league still has to make a decision on when to schedule the Bengals-Bills game.

In the grand scheme of things, the postponement doesn’t change the Ravens’ fate too much — it merely prolongs the anticipation of finding out who will be the divisional champion.

Ravens-Bengals Week 18 game will take place on Sunday as scheduled

If the Ravens miraculously beat the Bengals in Week 18 , they still have a decent shot at claiming the AFC North and earning a top playoff seed. They will, however, need to wait on the Bengals-Bills result as a Bengals win in that game would automatically give Cincinnati the AFC North title.

There’s a possibility the Bengals-Bills game may not be played at all, though that would give both of those teams a severe disadvantage in the AFC playoff seeding (and of course has serious consequences for the AFC North).

For now, Baltimore needs to be focused on beating the Bengals on the road, a tall order considering the team’s offensive ineptitude and the continued absence of Lamar Jackson.

The Bengals took only two and a half minutes to score a touchdown against the Bills on the opening drive; touchdowns for Baltimore, on the other hand, have been few and far between. The Ravens arguably only scored one against the Steelers because of a controversial flag drawn by Steelers’ Cam Heyward for unnecessary roughness.

No matter how high the stakes are, the Ravens-Bengals fixture in Week 18 should be an exciting rivalry game for the ages.