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NFL Ratings Highest They Have Been Since 2015

“It all came to a head in Massachusetts on Sunday night as the league capped off their stellar month.”

Russ Heltman

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nfl logo
Courtesy: NFL

The NFL is returning to normal in all the right ways on television. The league reported this week that its games are averaging 17.3 million viewers on streaming and TV. That mark represents its highest average viewership through four weeks since the 2015 season.

The minutiae in the numbers make the bounce back from the pandemic-shifted 2020 season even more impressive. NFL viewership is up 17% compared to last year. The amount of People using TVs has decreased by 8%, while the NFL’s share of TVs watching its games is up 26% compared to 2020.

Of the 21 most-watched telecasts in the country this year, every single one has been an NFL game. Award shows and a sprinkling of other events used to scatter on the list alongside the NFL matchups, but not anymore.

It all came to a head in Massachusetts on Sunday night as the league capped off their stellar month. Tom Brady and the Buccaneers 19-17 victory over Bill Belichick and the Patriots was the biggest hit of the season so far.

The game’s final viewing numbers checked in at 28 million people with streaming and TV combined. That represented the largest TV audience since Super Bowl LV this past February. The game outrated five of the six wild-card games and two divisional round games from this past postseason.

Tom Brady is no stranger to this many eyeballs watching him. The total paled when compared to the record viewership of an NFL game, which a Giants-49ers Monday Night Football game set with 41.3 million viewers on Dec. 3, 1990. Yet, Brady teams hold the top three spots in terms of viewership for Sunday-only games.

Brady sells, and NBC was buying the storylines all night long before kick-off. The anticipation for Brady v. Belichick helped Football Night In America post the second-highest rating in its history (12 million viewers).

The death of football was always an overreaction, and the numbers coming out of this NFL bear that out.

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ACC Network Adds Justin Walters as Host

“I’m grateful to ESPN and ACC Network for this opportunity and thrilled to be a part of the team. I’m ready to put in the work!”

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A photo of Justin Walters at the Super Bowl
(Photo: Justin Walters)

Justin Walters is the latest member of the ACC Network and its roster of hosts, ESPN has announced.

Walters previously worked for PIX11 News in New York City and served as a college football and basketball reporter for CBS Sports over the past three years. Walters will debut on Wednesday, Dec. 6 anchoring halftime coverage of the ACC Network’s men’s college basketball doubleheader. He will also host the network’s signature basketball show Nothing But Net.

“We’re excited to add Justin to our ACC Network team. He is both talented and versatile, an ideal combination for this role, which will include hosting shows in studio and on the road, as well as reporting and conducting interviews in the field,” said ESPN Senior Vice President of Production Michael Shiffman.  

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Walters graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor of Arts in broadcast journalism. He is an active member of The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. 

Prior to PIX11, Walters was the sports director and anchor for WRNN-TV/Fios1 News in the greater New York City area, where he covered both high school and professional teams throughout the tri-state area. His most memorable assignments included the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight in Las Vegas and Mariano Rivera’s unanimous Hall of Fame induction in Cooperstown, N.Y. He started his career in 2013 with WBBJ-TV in Jackson, Tennessee.

“Joining ESPN is truly a dream come true,” Walters said. “Growing up watching some of the greatest and recreating a broadcast as a kid…this is a full circle moment. I’m grateful to ESPN and ACC Network for this opportunity and thrilled to be a part of the team. I’m ready to put in the work!”

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ESPN Officially Re-Signs Mina Kimes to Multi-Year Contract

Kimes originally joined ESPN in 2014, where she has since made her stamp on the company in multiple disciplines.

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Mina Kimes

Get ready for more Mina Kimes on your ESPN airwaves. The company officially announced it re-signed its star NFL correspondent to a multi-year deal, shattering the hopes of Dan LeBatard Show fans everywhere.

Kimes originally joined ESPN in 2014, where she has since made her stamp on the company in multiple disciplines. She started as a writer for ESPN The Magazine and various ESPN websites before moving to an on-air personality for NFL Live, Around the Horn, and First Take. Kimes also hosts a podcast that also recently launched a YouTube channel to provide video content.

2023 has been a busy one for Mina. Earlier this year, Kimes agreed to terms with Meadowlark Media, LeBatard’s media company, to make sporadic appearances on his weekly podcast, while also agreeing to a new deal with ESPN. There’s been no word whether that deal is the same one that is being announced now or involves something different for Kimes.

Mina Kimes also allegedly turned down a lucrative offer from NFL Network to stay at ESPN, albeit on new terms. She also announced the birth of her first child, a son, fittingly during a Monday Night Football contest between her beloved Seattle Seahawks and the New York Giants.

Kimes said the familiarity with ESPN personalities was a key factor in her decision to stick around at the Worldwide Leader. “The biggest reason is I just really love the people that I work with, especially my family on NFL Live,” Kimes told Awful Announcing.

“It’s a little cliche to call them family, but they really are to me. They’re not only wonderful human beings and amazing to work with every day, but they challenge me, we push each other, and we make what I believe is one of the best shows on television. So just for me, probably the biggest appeal was just working with the people that I love so much there in particular.”

Mina Kimes also returns to ESPN today following her maternity leave.

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Greg Olsen: I’m Not Chasing an NFL Head Coaching Job

“This is not something I’m actively pursuing. I would call the A game at FOX for 30 years if that was what was in the cards.”

Ricky Keeler

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Greg Olsen
Courtesy: FOX Sports

With his former team, the Carolina Panthers, in search of a new head coach this offseason, there was a report last week from Joseph Person of The Athletic that the man who was the Panther tight end for 9 years and current FOX broadcaster Greg Olsen would be interested in the position if he was approached for it.

Olsen was a guest on The Rich Eisen Show on Thursday and he told Eisen that being a coach is not something that he is actively trying to pursue at this time.

“This is not something I’m chasing. This is not something I’m actively pursuing. I would call the A game at FOX for 30 years if that was what was in the cards. We all know how this world works. People come and go. Opportunities come and go. I’m never a believer in slamming the door on anything that you love.”

“That became kind of a big story this week. Obviously, there’s a lot of speculation and rumor and whatnot. I think the best thing I would say is ‘Who wouldn’t?’ This is a city that I love,” Greg Olsen admitted. “This is a team that I played the bulk of my career for. I want to see them have success. I live here, my kids are here.”

He continued by noting that he would listen to the offer if approached, despite not angling for the job.

“I would be crazy to entertain and take that conversation. This is a game I love. This is a game that I have been involved in my entire life. How that all plays out, I don’t know.

“I love doing what I do now. Calling games, studying games, I love doing this. How that future unfolds, a lot of this is out of any of our control.”

Greg Olsen took that question and used it to bring out a larger conversation as to why people overreact if a former player without as much coaching experience gets immediately dismissed as an idea for an open spot such as what happened when Jeff Saturday went from ESPN to being the interim coach of the Colts last year.

“What I will say is a larger conversation that has nothing to do with me, we saw it last year with Jeff Saturday taking over. I think there is an instant reaction that unless you have lived the NFL lifestyle in that ladder, you can’t be successful. I think we have to be careful saying experience leads to competence in all industries.

“Look at John Lynch. John Lynch had no experience in personnel and I’d say he has done a good job. We have to be careful thinking experience is the only prerequisite to be good at anything, coaching, broadcasting. Why do we just dismiss that as a pathway? Other sports don’t dismiss it. I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s an interesting conversation.”

As for answering the question itself, Eisen thought it was great because it showed how genuine Olsen is without trying to dismiss the question the second it was asked to him despite how difficult it is to answer. 

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