Now I could go about this one of two ways. I could simply sit here and write about what a disaster of a Thursday Night Football matchup the Chargers and Raiders has turned into due to injuries to both team's starting quarterback, and make it sound like I won't be watching a second of it. However, that would be disingenuous. While this matchup of starting quarterbacks may lack the appeal of Manning vs. Brady in their heyday, it's foolish to suggest that there still won't be millions of fans tuning in to watch the Chargers and Raiders play.
“The NFL boasted just yesterday that NFL games have generated 17.8 million viewers on average in 2023, the highest number since 2015,” writes Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. “From the time the 2023 season began, 72 of the 75 most-watched shows on TV have been NFL games.”
Now, why is this noteworthy? Well, one of the key storylines of the year has been not only the decline of quarterback play around the league, but also the rise of injuries to starting quarterbacks. Just look at this list of names:
Aaron Rodgers
Joe Burrow
Kirk Cousins
Deshaun Watson
Justin Herbert
Jimmy Garoppolo
Anthony Richardson
Daniel Jones
Those are the day one starting quarterbacks who have suffered season-ending injuries. And then there's this list:
Justin Fields
Kenny Pickett
Geno Smith
Matthew Stafford
Desmond Ridder
Derek Carr
Kyler Murray
(likely) CJ Stroud
Those are the day one starting quarterbacks who have missed at least one game due to injury.
We're talking about half of the league who has played without their starter at the most important position in football for at least a small chunk of the season. Couple that with defenses that seem to be catching up with offenses across the league, and it's no wonder that the league has seen a decrease in scoring for the second consecutive year. And yet, TV ratings continue to be on the rise, even though it was less than a year ago when the NFL defended their stricter roughing the passer penalties by asserting that “the health of quarterbacks” was linked “to the health of TV ratings.”
We've officially arrived at the point where the staff of ClutchPoints could split up into two teams and play each other in a football game, and as long as we were wearing Cowboys and Eagles uniforms and it were marketed as an NFL game, we'd still pull an average of 10 million viewers for fun. 15 million if the game were close in the 4th quarter. That's just the state of the NFL and football in America. Long behind us are the days where baseball could be considered America's game. The NFL has not just surpassed the MLB… it's left pro baseball in it's dust.
It doesn't matter who is under center or what coaches are on the sideline. Players kneeling, not kneeling, playing too soft or too dirty. None of it is of any consequence as long as the NFL's shield can be seen somewhere on the broadcast.