Joe Burrow is expected to be sidelined for at least three months after sustaining a foot injury that will require surgery, and while his absence could derail the Bengals’ playoff hopes, it may also do a number on the near-term outlook for the NFL’s media partners.
Burrow, who closed out last season with a league-high 4,918 passing yards and 43 touchdown tosses, suffered a severe “turf toe” injury to his left foot after being sacked in the second quarter of Sunday’s game against the Jaguars. While the name suggests something far more trivial, significant damage to the ligaments of the metatarsophalangeal joint can be incapacitating. (Imagine stepping on a 2-inch masonry nail every time you put any weight on the ball of your foot and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Burrow’s up against.)
This latest setback for Cincinnati’s $275 million asset not only would seem to have put the kibosh on the team’s mission to return to the postseason—the Bengals kicked off the 2025 campaign with +250 odds of winning the AFC North, and by Monday morning, Vegas books had downgraded their chances to +750—but could also prove to be painful for ABC, CBS and Fox.
While Cincy’s next game will play out in CBS’s 1 p.m. ET regional window, with A-team Jim Nantz and Tony Romo calling the action from Minneapolis, the Bengals will be all over the national dial throughout the following four weeks. In a road game against Denver that’ll serve as the capstone to Week 4, the Bengals will make their first coast-to-coast appearance as part of ABC’s Sept. 29 Monday Night Football broadcast.
From there, it’s two consecutive 4:25 p.m. ET national showcases, which average some 25 million viewers each week. Fox has Cincy hosting Dan Campbell’s Detroit Lions on the afternoon of Oct. 5, while CBS is set to carry Bengals-Packers in the same time slot on Oct. 12. The four-week run concludes the following Thursday, as the Steelers invade Paycor Stadium for a Week 7 AFC North showdown in Amazon’s primetime window.
Per the NFL’s flexible scheduling procedures, none of those games is eligible for a move to a less-scrutinized 1 p.m. ET kickoff.
In terms of alternative arrangements, Fox arguably has the best options for its Week 5 natty, as the other game scheduled in that window is Commanders-Chargers. That matchup checks off a whole lot of boxes and features two top-10 markets in No. 2 Los Angeles (5.84 million TV households) and Washington, D.C. (No. 8, with 2.61 million TV homes). These teams have squared up six times this century, with none of those games having been carried in a national TV slot.
Unfortunately for CBS, there isn’t much it can do to improve its Week 6 outlook, as the sole option in the network’s big Sunday afternoon slot is Patriots-Saints. CBS is already facing down a light load on Oct. 12, with just three games set for the 1 p.m. ET regional window (Browns-Steelers, Chargers-Dolphins, 49ers-Bucs), although the latter would make for a solid marquee listing if the NFL elected to push the kickoff up by three hours. That said, the Packers should serve as a viable insurance policy here, as Green Bay almost always draws a big TV crowd.
Jordan Love & Co. were the league’s fourth-biggest draw in 2024, averaging 21.1 million viewers in their eight national windows, a turnout that belies their relatively tiny local market reach. Milwaukee boasts a mere 944,900 TV homes, while the Packers’ official home base is smaller still with 478,970. If their populations were combined, those Wisconsin DMAs still wouldn’t qualify as one of the 20 largest media markets.
Four days after Cincy tangles with Green Bay, Amazon starts Week 7 with Steelers-Bengals. While Pittsburgh is another small-market team with an outsized fan base, nobody expects to be dazzled by an air war between Burrow backup Jake Browning and an Aaron Rodgers who at times has looked even older than his 41 years, 9 months and 15 days. The Oct. 16 game won’t sink to the depths of Amazon’s 2022 Falcons-Panthers game, which drew an all-time Thursday Night Football low of 6.8 million viewers, but this outing could still fall shy of the 10 million mark.
The Bengals will mostly slip off the radar after their four-week barnstorming tour, although three other national games remain on the schedule. For now, anyway. The most problematic is NBC’s primetime Thanksgiving game, which was to pit Burrow against two-time MVP Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. If the early prognosis is any indication, Burrow will still have a few weeks of rehab to see to when Cincy makes the trip to Baltimore, although NBC at least can take solace in the fact that Jackson is right up there with Josh Allen as one of the NFL’s most exciting QBs to watch—even while fighting off a tryptophan coma.
For what it’s worth, this is not the first time an injury or a big bet on an underperforming team has muddied the waters for the league’s media partners. After Tom Brady went down to a season-ending ACL tear in the first quarter of the Pats’ 2008 opener against the Chiefs, the NFL’s deliveries slumped to 14.6 million viewers per game. With Brady back in the saddle the following year, the TV numbers bounced back in a big way, improving 14% to 16.7 million.
With all due respect to Joe Burrow, the prospect of the Bengals facing down yet another protracted stretch with him in street clothes isn’t quite as earth-shaking for the NFL as the loss of Brady in 2008. At the time he suffered his lone catastrophic injury, Brady had already amassed three rings and was fresh off his first-ever Super Bowl loss to the Giants. As such, his absence tore a ragged hole in the NFL’s TV schedule, and the audience numbers dwindled in kind.
While injuries to stars are bad enough, sometimes a collective mania around an entire team can lead to ratings disruptions. In 2019, when everyone was hot on Baker Mayfield and the Cleveland Browns, the long-suffering AFC North franchise spit the bit. After years of remanding the Browns to a single national appearance per season, the rights holders locked Cleveland into seven big windows, four of which aired in primetime. (Prior to that show of irrational exuberance, the Browns hadn’t been featured in a night game since 2008.) Cleveland didn’t live up to the hype, the ratings were unspectacular and subsequently, they were busted back down to two national appearances the following year. It happens.
As unfortunate as Burrow’s latest setback is for him, his team and the fans, the networks and their streaming cousins shouldn’t lose too much ground during the Bengals’ upcoming media frenzy. Among other highlights, Fox has another Commanders-Cowboys brawl to look forward to on Oct. 19, while CBS has a Chiefs-Bills rematch teed up for Week 9 (Nov. 2). And as much as NBC is probably glad to have Sunday night’s dismal Falcons-Vikings game off its plate, the network can rest easy knowing that one of the season’s most-requested matchups, Packers-Cowboys, is teed up for Week 4.
By way of context, the last regular season meeting between Green Bay and Dallas was staged in 2022 and decided in overtime. Fox scared up 29.2 million viewers over the course of the game, which aired in 92% of available markets. Given a closely-contested game and the ratings boost afforded by Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel currency, NBC should have plenty to celebrate on Sept. 28—even if its Thanksgiving dinner comes out a little undercooked.