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Picture Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett steamrolling his way through a Pop Warner offensive line featuring a bunch of kids who are still negotiating their exit from the footie-pajamas stage of nightwear, and you’re about halfway to understanding the almost freakish dominance the NFL has over the American psyche. Imagine the 6-foot-4, 272-pound Defensive Player of the Year absolutely dismantling a scrawny 7-year-old who’s afraid of bees before flinging a second opponent (who’s scrawnier still and probably wearing a Kung Fu Panda T-shirt under his jersey) into a pyramid of halftime oranges.
Pop pop pop, crunch bang pow; like a five-time Pro Bowler laying waste to a phalanx of terrified second graders, the NFL’s hegemonic stranglehold on the culture is unwavering and relentless and not just a little bit bruising. (No scared-of-bees kids were harmed in the construction of this analogy.)
Just as it’s inadvisable for children to play tackle football against a grown man who’s half-panther, half-M1A2 Abrams battle tank, our annual attempt to draw a bead on the upcoming season’s highest-rated NFL broadcasts is perhaps more than a little dunderheaded. Or not. While there’s no telling what tomorrow brings, if past performance is any indicator of future success, by triangulating a handful of franchises (Cowboys, Chiefs, 49ers, Eagles, Bills) with the NFL’s top-performing TV windows, we should arrive at a pretty solid outlook on which games will put up the biggest numbers this fall.
But first, a brief housekeeping note. The projected deliveries are based on Nielsen’s live-plus-same-day deliveries for 2023-24, as well as the 10-year ratings track for each of the league’s national TV windows. While the NFL will be hard pressed to scare up bigger ratings than it did a year ago, when the TV turnout was up 7% and at an eight-year high, the cost of buying into this season’s slate promises to be more dizzying than ever before. It happens. If you’re a CMO with sufficiently deep pockets, what follows is a breakdown of the games you should probably snap up if you’d just as soon not spend 2025 clicking through job leads on LinkedIn.
Oh, and: We won’t be including either of the Netflix Christmas Day games, as it remains to be seen how the streams will be priced, or what the ad loads will look like, or if Nielsen will even be measuring them. Besides, Chiefs-Steelers is like finding a dead drifter under the tree, and we’re still not buying into the Texans hype. (Every year or so there’s a team that gets splashed all over the national schedule—see: recent vintages of Jets, Browns—and they don’t show up. The Texans played in one lousy national window last season, and now they’re all over the map. Houston, we have an overexposure problem.)
1) Giants at Cowboys (Fox Thanksgiving window, Nov. 28) 42.2M viewers, 11.8 HH rating
The Cowboys are as much a part of the holiday tradition as quivering, cranberry-based sides and your child’s mangy-looking hand turkey. Unfortunately, the 2024 edition of the New York Giants is basically about as up to snuff as the hand turkeys produced by this one-armed kid I went to elementary school with. (His snow angels were a disaster as well.) The last time I saw this person, he was goaltending the Pop-A-Shot game in a dive bar, each swat of his mighty paw sending the ball careening into the crowd of revelers. Now a practicing attorney, he should probably know better—just as you should know better than to pass up this game. Yes, it will cost you at least $1 million for a 30-second in-game unit, and if you wait around and grab a slot in scatter, you’re looking at something that’ll be a lot closer to $1.5 million. Obvious choice, for sure, but facts are facts: Even in a blowout, this is the biggest regular-season game of the year.
2) Bears at Lions (CBS Thanksgiving window, Nov. 28) 34.3M viewers, 11.8 HH rating
Despite the standard gap between deliveries in the early and mid-afternoon windows, the household rating will likely stay the same. (Rather than get into a whole rigamarole about why this is so, just go and count the coats on the guest-room bed, and there’s your answer.) The addition of out-of-home deliveries to Nielsen’s national sample in September 2020 has unearthed legions of ghost fans—stealth viewers who for decades went uncounted by the ratings service—and these recaptured impressions now account for around 40% of the total NFL Turkey Day deliveries. Another example of a game that will be watched regardless of the score, CBS’ game should also: a) cost advertisers north of $1 million a pop, and b) provide a sneak preview of your 2024 NFC champs.
Bonus prediction: Bills 29, Lions 28, Feb. 9, 2025, Caesars Superdome. Because hells yeah Rust Belt Bowl and also because nobody will remember this bold divination in three weeks, let alone by the time the Big Game® rolls around.
3) Chiefs at Bills (CBS national window, Nov. 17) 32.6M viewers, 13.3 HH rating
The Josh Allen-Patrick Mahomes rivalry is the gift that keeps on giving for the NFL and its media partners, a pairing that’s emblematic of the QB firepower that’s helped elevate the AFC to heights once reserved for the mega-market NFC. Last season’s arrhythmia-inducing AFC Divisional Round showdown averaged 50.4 million viewers on CBS, and now stands as the most-watched NFL game outside of the conference championships and the Super Bowl. The Chiefs survived 27-24, thanks to Tyler Bass’ unfortunate Scott Norwood moment, and have won all three of their postseason outings against the Bills, so this is a crucial test for Allen & Co.
But wait, there’s more! A lot more, as it turns out, since CBS’ late Week 11 slate also includes regional coverage of the Bengals-Chargers game. (While CBS has KC-Buffalo listed as its national offering, this could very well be a situation where something like 55% of the country sees Allen vs. Mahomes and the rest gets served up Burrow vs. Herbert.) In terms of young star QBs, this afternoon is like throwing peak Tom Brady and Peyton Manning into the Large Hadron Collider and watching the NFL universe turn itself inside-out. Fun!
4) Lions at Cowboys (Fox national window, Oct. 13) 31.3M viewers, 13.0 HH rating
Fresh off his roast on Netflix, Tom Brady this week got into a little barbed mischief of his own at Fox’s upfront presentation, where he followed the obligatory Dallas puffery (“Obviously having the Cowboys on is a huge draw, as [they’re] America’s Team”) with an off-the-cuff nod to the QB (“Dak Prescott, let’s see if he can finally come through.”) The Noo Yawk audience pounced on the remark like a goat on an old tin can, leading Brady to Urkel his way out of the moment with the faux-casual “Did that just slip out?” We’re never going to truly love you, Touchdown Tahwmmy, but if you keep that kind of thing up, we’ll keep the sound on. (Eli still owns your ass.)
5) Bengals at Chiefs (CBS national window, Sept. 15) 29.1M viewers, 12.9 HH rating
The Joe Burrow-Patrick Mahomes rivalry is the Oreo to Allen-Mahomes’ Hydrox cookie: Same basic look and feel, only one’s more expensive. We are living in exciting times.
6) Cowboys at Browns (Fox national window, Sept. 8) 28.6M viewers, 12.8 HH rating
Brady’s gentle dig at Prescott was delivered in the service of hyping this game, which also happens to be the first in which he’ll be calling the action alongside Kevin Burkhardt. The curiosity factor will help boost Fox’s deliveries, but a change in the NFL’s scheduling mandate should also go a long way toward thinning out the competition. In recent years, CBS and Fox split a double-decker national window in Week 1; this season will see the league revert to the exclusive format. As such, Brady’s debut will go head-to-head with two regional games on CBS (Raiders-Chargers, Broncos-Seahawks), while Fox will have the coast-to-coast window all to its lonesome.
Oh, and: Prescott played a key role in closing out Brady’s football career, as Dallas beat the Bucs 31-14 in TB12’s final NFL game. Dak threw for 305 yards, connecting on 25 of his 33 passes, of which four resulted in touchdowns. Brady went 35-of-66 for 351 yards and two aerial scores. Salty.
7) Cowboys at 49ers (NBC, Sunday Night Football, Oct. 27) 25.8M viewers, 12.3 HH rating
As much as those of us who aren’t Cowboys fans tend to get a bit weary of the team’s ubiquity, at least when Dallas is on the tube we aren’t subjected to in-game updates on whatever Dak Prescott’s girlfriend is getting up to in the luxury suite. The Chiefs and their No. 1 superfan will be equally inescapable this season; as a reminder, the T-Swizzle Effect is a fake idea. At any rate, these two NFC rivals last season finished first and third, respectively, in the race to amass the most national NFL viewers, and there’s no reason to believe that fans won’t flock to the latest installment of the Dallas-SF hatefest.
8) Ravens at Chiefs (NBC, NFL Kickoff Game, Sept. 5) 25.7M viewers, 12.3 HH rating
Another national window, another air battle between young AFC QBs with rocket launchers for arms. Arguably the two most exciting field generals in the league, this matchup between Lamar Jackson and the guy from the State Farm commercials will put the latter to the test. In so doing, the broadcast will draw about as many fans as last year’s mammoth NFL opener.
9) Eagles at Cowboys (CBS national window, Nov. 10) 24.6M viewers, 12.1 HH rating
Playoff implications. Glimpses of Jerry Jones as he sulkily takes in the action from the billionaire’s booth. The entirety of the New York market (7.6 million TV homes) hate-watching this bareknuckle brawl between NFC East rivals. Jalen Hurts is a star. You will watch, and you will like it.
10) Ravens at Cowboys (Fox national window, Sept. 22) 24.1M viewers, 12.0 HH rating
Dallas. Again. Don’t shoot the messenger.
