NFL gets the strong ratings it’s been missing in Cowboys-Steelers, Seahawks-Patriots

With the election finally over, with two good teams that recently met in a Super Bowl and getting a nice lead-in from one of the more entertaining games we’ve seen in quite some time (Cowboys-Steelers), pretty much everyone expected Sunday night’s Seahawks-Patriots game to get a good TV rating for NBC. And it did, based on the preliminary overnight rating from the country’s top 56 markets.

“The Seahawks 31-24 win over Patriots on NBC Sunday Night Football posts 14.3/23 overnight – best for any NFL primetime game since Week 1,” NBC Sports tweeted.

As noted by Sports TV Ratings, the game drew the best overnight rating for a Sunday night Week 10 contest in five years and also was up 13 percent from last year’s Week 10 game between the Seahawks and the Cardinals.

It also certainly helped that Seattle-New England was a barnburner. Both that game and Cowboys-Steelers had at least seven lead changes, the first time in NFL history that two such contests happened on the same day, according to Elias.

- FWBP Digital Partners -

The daytime games also did well compared with last year’s Week 10, at least on Fox, which had the Cowboys-Steelers game.

“14.2 average for Week 10 FOX double vs 11.7 for a single last year. Should cut our y-t-d deficit roughly in half when final numbers are in,” tweeted Michael Mulvihill of Fox.

We’ll see what happens next week, when the Sunday night game is Redskins-Packers and Cowboys-Ravens and Seahawks-Eagles are probably the two best games during the day.