ORCHARD PARK – Let’s pick up where we left off two weeks ago.

The divisional round of the American Football Conference playoffs returns to Western New York this weekend for the first time since the 2020 season.

The visiting Cincinnati Bengals and their fans – yes, the visiting Bengals and their fans – deserve a raucous standing ovation and the warmest of Western New York welcomes.

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We all know why.

The Jan. 2 Monday Night Football game between the Bengals and the Buffalo Bills could have improved either team’s playoff seeding.

Canceling the game under the circumstances was the right call. Putting into place a plan to adjust the playoffs under particular circumstances was also the right call.

You just knew, though, that the cancellation and the adjustment would affect different teams differently. No one could have known for sure how, because the National Football League rightly put the cancellation and adjustment into place before the Jan. 8 and 9 regular-season games.

However, given the results of those games, the cancellation and adjustment had the effect of:

¯ Giving the Kansas City Chiefs the No. 1 seed in the AFC, and thereby a wild-card-round bye, plus home-field advantage for the divisional round and any AFC championship game other than against the Bills.

¯ Giving the Bills the No. 2 seed in the AFC, and thereby home-field advantage for the wild-card round, the divisional round, and any AFC championship game other than against the Chiefs.

¯ Giving the Bengals the No. 3 seed in the AFC, and thereby home-field advantage for the wild-card round, any divisional-round game other than against the Bills, and any AFC championship game other than against the Chiefs.

Depending on who would have won the cancelled Jan. 2 game, the cancellation prevented either the Bills from having the No. 1 seed or the Bengals from having the No. 2 seed.

Both teams and their fans could have complained about this. Their points would have been understandable.

However, once the NFL rightly cancelled the Jan. 2 game, no playoff adjustment would – or even could – have been perfect.

To their credit, both teams and their fans have kept the focus on this weekend’s Bengals-Bills game and – even more importantly – on the recovery of Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bill who endured cardiac arrest during the Jan. 2 game and could have died either on the field or in the University of Cincinnati hospital to which he was taken.

For the Bengals’ and their fans’ part in keeping the focus on the game and on Hamlin’s recovery, they’re all especially deserving of a raucous standing ovation and the warmest of Western New York welcomes this weekend. Let’s give it to them. They’ve earned it.

If they prevail in the game, they’ll deserve a raucous standing ovation at the end of the game. Again, they’ve earned it.

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Now to the business at hand.

The current Bills’ team may well be the best since the inception of the franchise in 1960, which precedes most readers of this column, including this columnist.

On the one hand, there’s a sense that the Bills, five years after breaking the long playoff drought, remain understandably new to winning. Although this seems to be a very good team that is on the verge of being a great team, the team seems to be not quite past the verge.

On the other hand, being on the verge is an enormous improvement over the playoff drought. And if the Bills play as well as they can on both offense and defense, there’s a sense that no one can beat them.

No one.

Not in the divisional round.

Not in the AFC championship game.

And not even in the game thereafter, which shall remain nameless today.

Randy Elf joins the standing ovation for, and the welcome of, the Bengals and their fans to Western New York.

COPYRIGHT ç 2023 BY RANDY ELF