How fantasy football sites from Yahoo to ESPN are handling Week 17 scoring after Bills-Bengals postponement

The sole focus of the NFL world right now is the well-being of Damar Hamlin, as it should be.

According to ESPN’s Coley Harvey, who spoke with a family friend of the safety on Wednesday morning, there appears to be progress in Hamlin’s status.

As we await more good news on his health, fantasy football managers may be wondering about the status of their Week 17 contests — many of which were league championships. With the NFL’s announcement that the postponed game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills won’t be resumed this week (if at all), fantasy sites remain in a holding pattern.

Here’s the latest on where things stand:

Yahoo Sports

In a detailed update Tuesday, Yahoo Fantasy said Week 17 standings will update for now but further scoring updates will be applied once the NFL makes a decision regarding the Bills-Bengals game. In the event of a continuation, Week 17 scores will accrue as they normally would. Any Week 18 matchups effected by Week 17 score changes will be retroactively adjusted. If the game is declared final by the NFL, all fantasy points will remain as is. If the game is canceled and zeroed out, fantasy points will zero out as well.

ESPN

ESPN Fantasy Football announced a similar retroactive approach once an official decision is made on the game by the NFL. It’s extending the Week 17 matchup period through the end of Wednesday, pushing the start of the waiver period back to Thursday morning, to allow for the necessary adjustments on the technical side of things. The site will then advance Week 17 as is, but won’t count those matchups as official until the updates to Bills-Bengals are made.

NFL.com

NFL.com fantasy only provided a message saying its awaiting further updates from the league:

“Due to the tragic and unprecedented circumstances stemming from Monday night’s Bengals vs. Bills game, we are working through the impact to fantasy scores and are awaiting further updates from the NFL on plans to resume or cancel the game. In the interim, scores will be held in place as of the moment the game was suspended. We will provide further updates as soon as possible and appreciate your patience.”

More Sites

Given these unprecedented circumstances, we will be scoring Week 17 as is.
If the NFL resumes the game at a later time, there will be an option in commissioner tools to re-run Week 17 results. This is an option, not the default.
Our prayers are with Damar Hamlin and his family.

— Sleeper (@SleeperHQ) January 3, 2023

With all due respect to the situation, MFL has concluded that all Bills/Bengals will receive no default points for Week 17 of the 2022-23 season. We highly suggest each individual league take advantage of MFL’s flexibility to decide what is best for their unique group.

— MyFantasyLeague.com (@MyFantasyLeague) January 3, 2023

3. However, if the game is canceled or re-scheduled for any time AFTER this week then all Bills/Bengals will receive 0 points. This is directly from our rules in all season-long contests, which was specifically added for these scenarios:

— RealTime Fantasy Sports (@RTFSnews) January 3, 2023

Any further updates will be added when available.