The NFL announced Thursday night that it has canceled the remainder of the Monday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals and will designate the game as a “no contest,” leaving the two franchises with only 16 games in the 2022 schedule.

That decision — which comes on the heels of a postponement following the cardiac arrest and subsequent hospitalization of Bills safety Damar Hamlin during Monday’s game — will be followed by a special league meeting on Friday, in which team owners will vote on a playoff plan to balance out potential “competitive inequities.”

In a statement, the league said the cancellation was made after determining three factors: that resolving the game wouldn’t impact the playoff qualification of Buffalo and Cincinnati (which had both already clinched postseason bids); that completing the game would require the NFL to push back the playoffs by one week, thereby impacting all 14 postseason teams; and that making the decision preserves the ability of playoff teams to begin postseason preparations now, rather than waiting for a seeding resolution through an additional week of play.