We are now 10 games into the era-defining Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen rivalry, and while the two QBs are no strangers to the NFL on CBS broadcast team, their latest showdown may have temporarily dislodged something inside Tony Romo’s brain. In the waning minutes of the first quarter of Sunday’s Chiefs-Bills broadcast, CBS’ lead color analyst began making a series of noises that sounded like the Hamburglar going through a bad divorce.
If there’s something about this biannual pairing that seems to scramble the internal mechanisms of speech production, a stray burst of inscrutable groaning is a small price to pay for an unobstructed view of the Pat vs. Josh show. For what it’s worth, CBS’ TV rivals likely made similar noises when the weekend Nielsen ratings dropped; Buffalo’s 28-21 win averaged 30.84 million viewers, marking the Tiffany network’s fifth-largest Sunday NFL audience since 1998.
The Bills’ nationally televised victory now stands as the season’s second-biggest draw behind Fox’s Sept. 14 Super Bowl LIX rematch, which served up 33.76 million viewers in the late afternoon window. While off to its strongest NFL season in 10 years, Fox likely wouldn’t mind taking a crack at a future Chiefs-Bills showdown … although CBS effectively has first dibs on the matchup. CBS has televised each of the last seven meetings between the two teams, a streak that includes three contractually mandated AFC Championship games.
Although Fox’s Sunday football slate remains largely NFC-centric, three of its 12 national windows feature interconference games, while one—the Dec. 7 Bengals-Bills headliner—is set to be an all-AFC affair. The ratings outlook for that Week 14 slot was diminished by Joe Burrow’s Grade 3 turf toe injury, but the Cincy QB was seen prowling the sidelines of last month’s Jets game without his walking boot, leading armchair podiatrists to speculate that he could be back under center in time for the December trip to Buffalo.
Fox’s toast tends to land butter side up, and much of the network’s good fortune can be chalked up to superior planning. As was the case a year ago, Fox heavied up on the Dallas Cowboys in the early half of the season, while steering clear of Jerry Jones’ mercurial bunch in the latter portion. Dallas’ last national window on Fox is scheduled for Nov. 23, whereupon every other NFL media partner will cede prime real estate to the Cowboys. CBS has them hosting the Chiefs in the big Thanksgiving Day showcase, and even a lousy game is going to flirt with 40 million viewers. After that, Dallas’ late-season barnstorming tour will bring them to Amazon’s Prime Video, NBC’s Sunday Night Football and the Netflix Christmas doubleheader.
Following Sunday’s bye, the Cowboys are set to appear in national windows for six of the seven remaining pre-scheduled weeks. (The TV slate for Week 18 will be determined on or around New Year’s Eve.) While that level of late-season overexposure is less than ideal—Dallas is the only NFL franchise that can stumble through the first half of the season at 3-5-1 and still be all over the TV Guide listings in the back half—the Cowboys are largely immune to being flexed out of the big TV windows. It only happens every once in a silver-and-blue moon; last season, the league swapped out Fox’s Dec. 29 Dallas-Philly game in favor of an infinitely more compelling Packers-Vikings brawl, marking the first time Big D was booted from a national broadcast since 2020.
Giving Dallas the bum’s rush paid off handsomely for Fox and NFL fans, as Minnesota held off Green Bay in a 27-25 nail-biter that averaged 26.45 million viewers. Sticking with the Cowboys would have been a disaster, as the Eagles methodically pulled apart their NFC East foes by a 41-7 margin. (Not helping matters: Cooper Rush was running the Dallas offense, a job he’d inherited after Dak Prescott tore a hammy in Week 9.)
As much as the prospect of wading through two months of wall-to-wall Cowboys dates has left many football fans making involuntary Tony Romo noises, even the most vocal critics acknowledge that Dallas always puts up numbers, even when the team isn’t particularly good or all that much fun to watch. During a live First Take bit that aired earlier this week, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo engaged in his signature brand of soft-spoken understatement as he reviewed Dallas’ upcoming TV schedule.
Between operatic yelps and pinwheeling hand gestures, Russo bellowed about how the Cowboys were going to ruin his holidays (“I HATE CHRISTMAS!”) while expressing a small measure of sympathy for the play-by-play veterans who’ll be tasked with calling the games.
“Did you see what on television that I gotta put up with?” Russo hollered, thumbing his nose at years of Catholic school sentence-diagramming exercises. “I know they’re gonna get ratings!! [sotto voce] It’s on ESPN so I gotta be nice. [screaming resumes] I know they’re gonna get ratings!! But who cares about the Dallas Cowboys and the Raiders game!!!”
Russo’s tirade had his First Take comrades in stitches, but the joke’s on the rest of us. Still, there’s no one to blame but ourselves. Despite Arizona having built up a 24-7 lead in the third quarter, this week’s Cowboys-Cardinals game still scared up 16.37 million viewers across ABC and the ESPN networks, or a full 1.1 million viewers more than the Monday Night Football full-season average. But for last season’s analogous Bucs-Chiefs window (20.63 million viewers), Disney enjoyed its best Week 9 TV turnout since 2011. Then again, Two and a Half Men used to draw nearly 19 million viewers. America: Sometimes we’re in the mood for crap.
Only two of those upcoming Cowboys games are in flexible windows, and even those matchups will probably stick. Through Monday night’s game, Dallas is averaging a staggering 24.66 million viewers in its six national windows, a performance that has helped nudge the NFL to its hottest start in 10 years. Season-to-date, the league’s TV and streaming partners are collectively averaging 17.82 million viewers, up 7% versus last year’s mark. And while Nielsen’s new ratings currency is responsible for a portion of those outsized deliveries—revert to the “panel-only” methodology of yesteryear and the seasonal boost is closer to +2%—the organic gains are especially impressive in light of the ongoing erosion of TV usage.
You’re going to hear a whole lot of weird noises coming from your TV between now and the end of the season, but there’s nothing off about this year’s batch of NFL ratings. Even if Russo isn’t alone in hoping that Dallas doesn’t find a way down his chimney this year, you may as well set a place at the holiday table for America’s Team®. They’re not going anywhere.