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If you thought that the past two weekends of NFL football games had the closest finishes which you can ever remember, you were right!
With four divisional (semifinal) games played two weeks ago and the AFC and NFC championship games played last weekend, every single game was decided in the final seconds.
Six games with six incredibly close finishes.
If I hadn’t seen most of these football games with my own eyes, a legitimate case of eyebrow raising suspicion might be in order.
How close were the six games? A total of just 21 points (or 3.5 points per game) was the total winning margin after all six games were played.
Let’s review the final scores from each of the playoff games over the past two weekends:
AFC Divisional/Semifinal Game 1 – Cincinnati 19, Tennessee 16 (walk-off 52-yard field goal by Cincy as time expired)
AFC Divisional/Semifinal Game 2 – Kansas City 42, Buffalo 36 (Overtime – first possession TD by Chiefs)
AFC Championship Game – Cincinnati 27, Kansas City 24 (Overtime – second possession score by Bengals)
NFC Divisional/Semifinal Game 1 – San Francisco 13, Green Bay 10 (walk-off 45-yard field goal by 49ers as time expired)
NFC Divisional/Semifinal Game 2 – Los Angeles Rams 30, Tampa Bay 27 (walk-off 30-yard field goal by Rams as time expired)
NFC Championship Game – Los Angeles Rams 20, San Francisco 17 (Rams intercept a pass with one minute left in game to preserve the win)
So, the AFC games were decided by 3+6+3 for 12 points. The NFC games were decided by three points each for nine points. That’s a 12 + 9 = 21 total point differential for the six games.
Let’s now see how that stacks up against other recent years. The prior year’s 2020 NFL playoffs saw a 62-point (10.33 points per game) final score differential over the same six football games.
I researched all the way back to the year 2000 and have confirmed that the 2021 NFL playoff finales were, by far, the closest six games played since the turn of the century.
If you look back to the year 2003, you will find that the six games had a meager point differential of just 40 points (6.67 points per game). Just two of those games in 2003 had a point differential in double digits (10 and 11). Indeed, it was another good year for close playoff games.
The “worst” year for divisional and championship games was in 2000. None of the six games were particularly close as victory margins ranged from a low of ten points to an incredible high of 41points as the New York Giants blanked Minnesota 41-0 in the NFC Championship game.
The average for the first 21 years of this century has been a little over 69 points for the six playoff games. That equates to an 11 ½ point winning margin in each game.
While this year’s razor-thin margins in the NFL playoffs have been a statistical outlier, the league’s television partners are not complaining about these close games. They are thrilled with the viewership gains!
NFL television ratings have been leaking air for a few years after the Colin Kaepernick comments turned-off millions of fans. Ditto for the NFL’s full embrace of social justice messaging at games beginning in 2020, too.
The recent pandemic didn’t help as the 2020 NFL season featured either partially or completely empty football stadiums. The loss of vocal fans pulling for their home team made home viewing a lot less entertaining.
This year, the NFL seems to have lessened a bit of the on-field messaging. Due to changing guidelines, fans were allowed back in the stands once again, too. The regular season’s weekly television ratings started to recover as well.
In January, the exciting last two weeks of NFL playoff games (with photo-finish endings) have seen television ratings recover with a significant positive bump.
Two weeks ago, the Saturday afternoon AFC divisional playoff game featuring Cincinnati at Tennessee brought nearly 31 million viewers for CBS and marked the largest audience for that game since 2016.
On Saturday night two weeks ago, the San Francisco at Green Bay game on Fox pulled just under 38 million television viewers. That was the largest audience for that NFC divisional game since 2002.
If you haven’t noticed, the NFL recently began to move their playoff games to be played into the evenings on both Saturdays and Sundays. In previous years, the two Saturday and Sunday games would be played in early afternoon and late afternoon time slots as a lead-in to the networks’ nightly programming line-up.
Not anymore.
The Ratings Godzilla (aka the NFL) has now seized the evening programming schedule from the networks during playoff weekends in January. Though it might seem a bit hard to believe, the NFL playoff ratings bring about ten times the average television audience which might ordinarily tune-in to watch CBS, Fox, or NBC programming on a typical Saturday or Sunday night.
Any significant ad revenue lost by the TV networks from playing games during the early afternoon window have been recovered and enhanced by increased ad rates and revenues for NFL playoff games being played in the new evening time slots.
The TV ratings trend carried over to the Sunday divisional/semifinal games, too. NBC’s afternoon coverage of the NFC Tampa Bay/Los Angeles Rams game fetched over 38 million viewers. It was NBC’s largest non-Super Bowl audience since 2006.
The highest rated football game that weekend was the Sunday night finale featuring the Buffalo Bills at the Kansas City Chiefs. Nearly 43 million viewers tuned in to Fox (correct – not CBS) to watch the overtime win by Kansas City. It was the highest rated divisional round game on Fox since 2017’s match-up of the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys.
Last Sunday’s AFC and NFC championship games didn’t disappoint, either.
The AFC title game featuring the Bengals at Chiefs game on CBS drew nearly 48 million viewers (highest since 2018), while the NFC championship match-up of the 49ers at Rams delivered about 51 million viewers for Fox (highest since 2019).
Again, remember that this year’s games are now being played in the more viewer-friendly television windows (central time) of 3:30 PM for game 1 and 7PM for game 2. In previous years, the two games were played at 1PM and 4:30 PM (Central).
The bottom line is that the NFL is desperately seeking to regain momentum after a few years of slowly declining television ratings. Moving the late playoff game into the evening time slot was definitely a winner for at-home viewers. The extremely close games in this 2021 NFL playoff season certainly helped boost interest, too.
Looking ahead to the Super Bowl a week from this Sunday, the match-up of the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams doesn’t feature a recent “fan favorite” team or player such as Kansas City (Patrick Mahomes), Green Bay (Aaron Rodgers) or any team which Tom Brady had been playing for.
I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of US states will be pulling for the underdogs from Cincinnati as Joe Burrow’s mystique has gained momentum by the week.
The NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show (which I usually don’t watch) will feature a mix of some popular but somewhat controversial entertainers. As usual, this helps to add some viewers simply watching in support of their favorite artists while another segment of the audience will stick around to see what the controversy was about.
Last year’s Super Bowl lost nearly 10 million viewers as “only” 92 million people watched as Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Bucs downed Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs.
After the Super Bowl had garnered over 100 million viewers in ten of the eleven previous years, the television ratings drop in February, 2021 was a big surprise to the NFL and the networks.
It marked the lowest television rating for pro football’s big finale since 2006.
All eyes – especially those of us who watch the numbers – will be interested in this year’s outcome. Regardless of the final ratings for the Cincinnati vs. LA Rams game in another week, the NFL’s Super Bowl still blows away all other television rivals.
Just like in the movies, Godzilla (or, in this case, the NFL) comes out the big winner!