The NFL is riding an Eagles-fueled hot streak in the ratings, and that figures to continue for Philadelphia’s Sunday night matchup against rival Dallas. Here is a ratings-focused preview.
How to watch Eagles-Cowboys on Sunday Night Football
Date: Sunday, December 10
Time: 8:20 PM ET
Networks: NBC
Streaming options: Peacock
The full NFL schedule is available here.
Ratings prediction and analysis
Even by the lofty standards of the National Football League, the past few weeks have been particularly strong in the ratings. First, there was the Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch, the most-watched Monday Night Football game in 27 years. Then, there was the customary Thanksgiving viewership feast (aided by out-of-home viewing), followed by the largest non-Thanksgiving regular season audience in nine years. All told, the five largest audiences of this season have come just since November 20. The sixth is likely to occur tonight.
The Cowboys are usually the headliner in any game they play, at least as far as the ratings are concerned. Their matchup against Philadelphia tonight is a rare exception. The league-leading defending NFC champions have emerged as the NFL’s top draw this season, with their past four games delivering the four largest audiences of the season outside of Thanksgiving. That includes the 27 and nine-year highs mentioned above. Overall, the Eagles have been featured in each of the five most-watched (non-Thanksgiving) windows this season.
Also among those windows is their previous matchup with the Cowboys in Week 9, which averaged 27.1 million viewers — at the time the most-watched Nielsen-measured telecast of the season. That game aired in the 4:25 PM ET late doubleheader window on FOX, typically the most-watched telecast of a given week. The rematch airs on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which generally has a lower ceiling — at least in the Nielsens.
Typically, one does not need to specify “Nielsen” when discussing television ratings, but NBC is a special case. The network issues a “Total Audience Delivery” metric that combines traditional Nielsen estimates with a streaming audience measured by Adobe Analytics. As streaming accounts for a greater and greater portion of the viewing audience, the gap between the Nielsen-only figure and NBC’s “TAD” has increased. NBC’s top Nielsen-measured audience this season is just shy of 25 million (24.8 million for Chiefs-Jets in Week 4), while its top “TAD” is north of 27 million (27.5 million for Lions-Chiefs in the NFL Kickoff Game).
Whether one is citing Nielsen only or NBC’s “TAD,” there is little question that Eagles-Cowboys will continue Philadelphia’s run atop the viewership charts. The only real suspense (if one can use that word in reference to television ratings) is where the game will rank for the season. On this front, the “TAD” will be the difference-maker. Putting aside the Thanksgiving afternoon games, the top audience this season was 30.9 million for the Week 12 national window on CBS (mostly Bills-Eagles). In order to surpass that number, NBC will have to deliver its largest regular season NFL audience since reacquiring rights. The current high is 30.3 million for a Dallas-Washington game in 2012 (a Nielsen-only figure with no out-of-home viewership). That may be reachable — for example, a Nielsen audience in the 28 million range and an Adobe Analytics audience around two million — but should be considered a best-case scenario.
More likely is a Nielsen audience in the 26-27 million range, plus two million or so streaming viewers, to put viewership on par with Eagles-Chiefs on Monday Night Football (29.03M). That would still be the second-largest regular season audience on NBC since it resumed airing games in 2006.
Realistically, between out-of-home viewing and the combination of measurement companies, most comparisons for this game — to games on other networks and certainly to games in other decades — will be somewhere short of apples-to-apples. For those with a passing interest in the numbers, just know that a great many viewers will tune in.
NFL Sunday Night Football: Eagles-Cowboys (8:20p Sun NBC). Prediction: 26.8M per Nielsen, 2.23M per Adobe Analytics, 29.0M overall.
Most-watched NFL games this season
As previously noted, the Eagles have been featured in the five most-watched NFL windows this season, excluding Thanksgiving.
