Two of the most entertaining NFL games of the young season could not quite measure up to the equivalent year-ago windows.
Sunday’s NFL national window, featuring the Ravens-Cowboys International Series game from Brazil in 95% of markets, averaged 24.90 million viewers on CBS — down from last year’s Week 3 national window, which aired on FOX (mostly Cowboys-Bears: 25.47M). Viewership also declined from two years ago, when the same Ravens-Cowboys matchup aired on FOX (27.29M).
Despite the decline, the telecast was still the most-watched Week 3 window on CBS since 2014. For the season, it ranks fourth among all game windows behind the previous week’s national window on FOX (mostly Commanders-Cowboys: 27.21M), the season premiere of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” (Giants-Cowboys: 25.66M) and the Patriots-Seahawks Kickoff Game (25.09M). As one might be able to discern, three of the top four have involved the Cowboys.
Baltimore’s last-second win — which peaked with more than 30 million viewers — also ranks as the most-watched NFL International Series game on record. That comes with the rather significant caveat that the majority of International Series games have been 9:30 AM ET starts on NFL Network, with an occasional early afternoon or primetime game in the mix. Prior to Sunday, no International Series game had been the featured matchup in the late doubleheader window — traditionally the most-watched NFL telecast of a given weekend — in nearly a decade.
Earlier in the day, CBS averaged 17.71 million for its early doubleheader window, which featured Bengals-Steelers in 51% of markets — the network’s largest Week 3 audience in that window since 1990. The competing singleheader window on FOX was slightly higher at 17.90 million, up 11% from last year on CBS (16.15M).
Shifting to primetime, Broncos-Rams averaged 20.8 million on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” — down 18% from last year’s TV-friendly pairing of the Chiefs and Giants last year (25.3M per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics). The Broncos’ back-and-forth win was the least-watched of the first four games on NBC this season, though that is to be expected given that the previous three featured the Chiefs, Cowboys and a season-opening Super Bowl rematch.
