NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue's decision not to play 15 games this Sunday and Monday met with wide support Thursday from Bengals players, coaches and management.

        It appeared later Thursday that the games might be rescheduled Jan.6, in place of the wild-card playoff games. All teams still would play a 16-game schedule, although Tagliabue said in a statement that other options — such as a 15-game schedule — also are under consideration.

        Bengals president Mike Brown, who initially wanted to play this weekend, even in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., fell in line Thursday behind Tagliabue.

        “I was talking with one of the Giants coaches (former Bengals offensive line coach Jim McNally) last night, and he didn't see how they could play a game in New York with the smoke still coming out of the rubble across the river from the Meadowlands,” Brown said.

        “In the future, people will look back at it and approve of it.”

        The Bengals were scheduled to play Sunday at Nashville against the Tennessee Titans. Cincinnati's next game is Sept.23 against Super Bowl champion Baltimore at Paul Brown Stadium. Tickets are still available.

        Thursday, Tagliabue said, “We, as a people, will not be intimidated, but even as we go forward and more strongly than ever, that did not mean we had to go to a sporting event at our first opportunity.”

        Coach Dick LeBeau was informed of Tagliabue's decision by team media relations employees at the end of Thursday morning's practice. Then he gathered the players and told them.

        “It's a time of national mourning,” said LeBeau, who agreed with Tagliabue's decision. “We all feel it. All Americans feel it.”

        Cornerback Tom Carter, the Bengals' player representative to the NFL Players Association, participated in a conference call Wednesday night with 30 other player

        reps and union executive director Gene Upshaw.

        “It's a win-win for everybody,” Carter said. “It shows the proper respect. It creates no negative publicity for the league. We want to support the entire country.”

        The union supports the idea of making up the postponed games on a final weekend of the season. That would mean eliminating the first wild-card weekend and dropping the number of playoff teams from 12 league-wide to eight. There is only one week between the NFC and AFC Championship Games on Jan.20 and the Super Bowl on Jan.27 in New Orleans.

        Several Bengals players have spent parts of Wednesday and Thursday ducking into the equipment room at Paul Brown Stadium to watch television.

        Tight end Marco Battaglia, a native of Queens, N.Y., said he went to high school with several men who are now New York City police officers and firefighters. Battaglia also has not heard from a friend who was at the top of the first World Trade Center tower hit by a hijacked airliner Tuesday morning, and he said his cousin's fiance and the fiance's brother are still unaccounted for in the Trade Center wreckage.

        “Like the president said, we're at war, and we don't know with who,” Battaglia said. “How could you right now bring 70,000 people into a stadium when they just blew up our biggest American monument?”

        The Bengals will practice today, Sunday and Monday. They will be off Saturday.

        Defensive tackle Oliver Gibson put the events of the past few days in perspective.

        “We're in a state of emergency as Americans, and there are some things that are bigger than football,” Gibson said. “I wish we were playing football, but I wish we never got bombed. I wish this thing never happened.”

        Offensive tackle John Jackson supported the decision.

        “The big thing right now is public safety,” he said. “You can't take anything for granted. We took it for granted for a long time.”

        Offensive tackle Willie Anderson said: “I don't think we should be playing a game when they're still pulling bodies out of (the wreckage) and kids are without parents.

        “You can't possibly be thinking about scoring a touchdown and trying to be happy about it when we're in a national emergency. What we do is play a game.”

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