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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Chris Roling

Bengals’ Zac Taylor hits NFL for AFC playoff seeding solution

To say the Cincinnati Bengals and head coach Zac Taylor are not thrilled with the NFL would be an understatement.

Under the league’s proposed AFC playoff seeding rules this year, the Bengals could lose out on a chance to host a playoff game in the wild card round despite winning the AFC North — via coin flip.

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That strange quirk is the NFL’s attempt to make things fair for the Ravens, who with a win on Sunday would sweep the Bengals and have the same number of wins, yet still be locked out of the divisional crown.

But the idea — a Bengals-Ravens matchup in the playoffs after a Ravens win in Week 18 would have home field decided by a coin flip — goes directly against the established rule book.

Friday, Zac Taylor hit the NFL multiple times in a presser over it, as captured by the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Charlie Goldsmith:

Mike Petraglia of CLNS Media captured Taylor’s reaction to the Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn pushing back hard on the proposal:

Full remarks:

The short of it? The Bengals have every right to protest an extremely rare in-season rule change, especially when voting parties have a vested competitive interest in it.

But as Taylor and players stressed on Friday, beating the Ravens on Sunday takes away the random factor the NFL has attempted to add to the equation.

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