The NFL’s playoff ratings took a hit over the extended wild-card weekend as a series of plodding, one-sided games sent millions of fans scrambling for a less tedious alternative. Given the state of play, the outcome could’ve been a lot worse, and there are promising divisional round matchups around the corner that could reverse fortunes.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the six wild-card games averaged 27.8 million viewers, which marked an 8% decline versus the 30.2 million per game they scared up in last year’s opening sextet. The average deliveries were down 2.42 million viewers per game compared to the 2024 wild-card slate.
Deliveries for four of the six playoff games were down compared to last season’s lineup, as the media partners bore the brunt of what amounts to an uncrossable divide between the NFL’s haves and have-nots. Here’s how the individual windows fared in the face of an underwhelming three days of football:
Chargers-Texans, CBS: 26 million viewers, up 1%, or +175,000, versus last year’s analogous Browns-Texans blowout on NBC. Having been assigned the opening Saturday slot in each of the eight years in which they’ve punched their ticket to the playoffs (2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2024, 2025), the Texans—who’ve never been big national TV draws—should by now be resigned to their virtual ownership of this uncelebrated berth. (Prior to the establishment of an exclusive streaming window in 2024, the early Saturday game was by far the NFL’s least-watched postseason slot.)
Houston’s 32-12 handling of the Chargers set the tone for the rest of the weekend, as: a) it wasn’t all that much fun to watch and b) it featured the implosion of a young quarterback. The Texans’ defense harassed Justin Herbert into throwing four picks, which was one more than he coughed up during the entire regular season. Herbert also bore the brunt of four sacks behind a porous O-line, and while fans at the time could take solace in the thought that the subsequent wild card games would be far more compelling, that hoped-for improvement was long in coming.
Steelers-Ravens, Amazon Prime: 22.1 million viewers, down 3%, or -790,000 viewers, from last year’s Dolphins-Chiefs outing on Peacock (22.9 million). Pittsburgh’s latest no-show effort prompted a grouchy Kirk Herbstreit to call out the team’s performance a few minutes before the end of the second quarter: “Where the hell is the fight? This is the Pittsburgh Steelers! There’s nothing! They’re just going through the motions.” The fans responded in kind, although the game’s peak viewership (24.7 million viewers between 9 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. ET) suggests that things may have turned out a little better for the streamer if Pittsburgh had bothered to show up. That said, Amazon’s deliveries were its strongest since it snapped up the rights to Thursday Night Football three years ago.
Broncos-Bills, CBS: 31.1 million viewers, up 1%, or +53,000 viewers, compared to the network’s lone wild card broadcast of 2024 (Steelers-Bills). CBS was the only network to post year-over-year ratings gains during the unsightly opening weekend, and it arguably has the best chance of putting up the biggest numbers in the divisional round when it hosts the Ravens-Bills shootout on Sunday.
Josh Allen did the usual Josh Allen things in a 31-7 rout, but the Bills’ defense also stepped up. After an early Bo Nix touchdown pass, Denver didn’t score again in the remaining 47 minutes and 24 seconds. At this point, it became clear that the NFL’s talent gap wasn’t going to make this a weekend to remember for anyone who enjoys closely contested football, although there was hope that the afternoon Packers-Eagles game would provide a respite from all the mediocrity.
Packers-Eagles, Fox: 35.9 million viewers, down 11% from last year’s Packers-Cowboys game (40.163 million). Hope is for suckers. Another dud, although Fox still earned bragging rights as the weekend’s top draw. Much of the year-to-year drop can be attributed to the usual tough comps any network faces whenever Dallas is in (and out of) the mix. The denizens of JerryWorld have averaged 40.8 million viewers over the course of their last two wild card games on Fox and CBS, and they leave big shoes to fill.
Down at field level, it was the same old story. The Eagles’ defense exposed Jordan Love’s weaknesses, picking him off three times in yet another poor showing by a young QB. Philly’s offense, meanwhile, played a clean game, even if Jalen Hurts failed to light it up. Speaking of which, the NFL’s offensive production has been wanting thus far in the postseason, as the wild card round’s average of 39.2 points per game was dwarfed by last year’s figure (51.3 ppg). Defense may win championships, but scoring draws a crowd, and this year’s output was down 14% compared to the regular-season average (45.8 ppg). For what it’s worth, scoring in the 2024 wild card games was up 18% versus the regular-season’s 43.5 ppg.
Commanders-Bucs, NBC: Inclusive of streaming impressions, the game averaged 29 million viewers, down 19% from last year’s primetime Rams-Lions showcase (36 million), while NBC’s vanilla TV deliveries (26.2 million) were off 19% versus 32.1 million.
Go figure. The Football Gods finally deign to provide us with a nailbiter, and yet the TV turnout was still somewhat meh—at least by the NFL’s lofty standards. Could be that fans were simply exhausted by all the prefatory ugliness that led up to Washington’s first playoff victory in 18 years, but anyone who tuned out early missed a hell of a star turn from the Commanders’ Jayden Daniels. The rookie turned the tables on the young-QB narrative, closing out the win with 268 yards passing, a pair of touchdowns and 36 rushing yards. Washington is starting to look like a team of destiny—witness the rare helpful doink that nudged Zane Gonzalez’s 37-yard game-winner through the uprights with triple zeros on the clock—although they’ll have to get past Dan Campbell’s heavily-favored Lions (-9.5) on Saturday night.
Vikings-Rams, ESPN/ABC: 25.3 million viewers, down 13% versus last year’s Eagles-Bucs game (29.1 million). Sam Darnold, who in 2019 was memorably heard to say, “I’m seeing ghosts” during a 33-0 Monday Night Football mauling, had that familiar haunted look about him against the Rams. After leading the Vikings to a standout 14-win season, the 27-year-old QB fell apart in his playoff debut, taking nine sacks for a net loss of 82 yards and a fumble. Yipes.
Up next: With that unpleasantness out of the way, the divisional round will kick off with the twin debuts of the defending champs (Texans-Chiefs) and the league’s top national TV draw (Commanders-Lions). That’s right: Just two years after being limited to a pair of coast-to-coast broadcasts, the Detroit Lions this season averaged 22.6 million viewers across a 10-game slate, besting the Cowboys by some 175,000 impressions.
The divisional round concludes Sunday with Rams-Eagles and a battle of top MVP candidates in Ravens-Bills. Presumably the quality of play will be much improved now that most of the pretenders have been eliminated, but scarcity should also work in the networks’ favor. With seven games left before the NFL goes on hiatus for seven months, the allure of televised football begins peaking as its inevitable absence becomes harder to ignore.
