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NFL TV ratings: Saints-Rams delivers for Fox, Eagles-Falcons flails for NBC
Your big winner on Sunday’s Week 2 action, aside from the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots: Fox. Your big loser, apart from New Orleans Saints fans: NBC.
Fox’s ratings for Sunday averaged 13.6, the network’s highest average for any week since Week 10 of 2016, according to Sports Media Watch. That was due to two marquee games: Cowboys-Redskins in the early going, and Saints-Rams in the afternoon. Overall, ratings were up 21 percent for CBS over last year, and up 34 percent for Fox since 2017.
Sunday afternoon’s game featured the NFC championship rematch — Saints at Rams — that turned out to be less-than-spectacular football. But it was still football, and won a strong 15.8 rating for its time period.
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Patrick Mahomes is turning into a major ratings play. Even though there was little doubt of the outcome of Sunday afternoon’s game against Oakland, Mahomes and the Chiefs earned a 9.9/22, up from last year’s 8.3/18 in the same slot last year.
Sunday night’s Falcons-Eagles matchup featured two teams apparently hellbent on giving the game to the other. And while the Falcons ended up winning, ratings were down — relatively speaking — from prior installments. The 12.2 rating/22 share was down about 12 percent from last year’s Week 2 Sunday night game, although that one featured the Cowboys and the Giants, always a ratings winner. This marked a low-water mark for “SNF”; the rating was the lowest for a Week 2 performance since 2008, when the Steelers met the Browns.
“Sunday Night Football” nonetheless continued its ratings dominance, doubling up the ratings of the No. 2 show (“60 Minutes,” believe it or not.) Top markets for “SNF” were Philly (32.6/51), Atlanta (22.3/40), and New Orleans (19.6/28), which was apparently keeping tabs on its NFC South rival.
Top Markets for Last Night's @Eagles - @AtlantaFalcons SNF Matchup on NBC pic.twitter.com/sLZa36PcgB
— NBC Sports PR (@NBCSportsPR) September 16, 2019
Monday night’s game was supposed to feature two of the NFL’s best young QBs in Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold, but the Jets’ Darnold is out with mono. We know the game will do phenomenal ratings regardless — it’s football — but the question now is whether it will hit the highs it could have, given that this will almost certainly be a mess of a game.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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