Sunday’s Super Bowl between New England and Los Angeles certainly doesn’t lack for storylines. There’s Patriots quarterback Tom Brady looking to cement his legacy as the best ever with a sixth title. The coaching matchup features the wily legend Bill Belichick versus the genius upstart Sean McVay. Fans are even obsessing over CBS analyst Tony Romo’s uncanny ability to predict plays before the snap.
And that’s just the way the NFL likes it.
After a 2017 season dominated by headlines about player protests, declining ratings and other off-the-field controversies, the league bounced back in 2018. Television ratings jumped 5 percent, ending a two-year skid. The on-field product saw an infusion of young talent, and scoring is at a record high.
That’s not to say the league avoided controversy — fans in New Orleans are still angry over a highly disputed non-call in the NFC Championship game — but the NFL is clearly in a better place.
“A lot of things went the league’s way this year,” said Patrick Crakes, the former Fox Sports senior vice president of programming, research and content strategy who is now a media consultant. “But you see what happens when everything goes right practically.
“It’s almost like throwing gasoline on an enormous bonfire. So the bonfire’s big. It just went really well this year.”
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Better matchups
NFL ratings were up across the board this season.
In prime time, ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” saw an 8 percent bump to average 11.8 million viewers, while NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” went up 6 percent (19.3 million) and Fox’s “Thursday Night Football” increased 4 percent (14.9 million). For the Sunday afternoon slate, Fox and CBS’s ratings rose 2 percent (18 million) and 8 percent (16.5 million) respectively.
The league can partially thank its schedule-makers, Mr. Crakes said.
“They’ve done a really great job of figuring out how to set these games up over 17 weeks,” he said. “And they’ve figured out how to schedule for London and they’ve figured out how to schedule for ’Thursday Night Football.’ … Some of those Thursday night games were pretty exciting and some of the Monday night games were pretty exciting, so you kind of bookend Thursday through Monday over 17 weeks. It just worked out really well.”
Some of that success requires a bit of luck, as injuries and records can sour what seems like an appealing game before the season.
Whether it was luck or planning, the NFL clearly had better matchups in prime time. Instead of relying on mostly divisional matchups for Thursday night, Fox was rewarded with games like Saints-Cowboys (two huge fan bases) and Vikings-Rams (two top NFC contenders at the time) after purchasing the league’s Thursday package for $3.3 billion over five years last year.
Offensive explosion
Matchups can go only so far. The league’s on-field product has to entertain — and it delivered in 2018.
Teams scored a combined 1,371 touchdowns — the most ever in a season. Most of those scores came from passing as teams threw for 847 touchdowns, also a league record. In total, there were 146 more touchdowns in 2018 than the year prior.
Perhaps the best example of the league’s offensive revolution was a November shootout between the Rams and Kansas City Chiefs — in which the Rams prevailed, 54-51. The two teams combined for 14 touchdowns.
The scoring uptick isn’t an accident.
In recent years, the NFL has adjusted rules to protect quarterbacks and open up the middle of the field. In 2018, the league put even more emphasis on enforcing roughing-the-passer penalties and cracked down on defensive players leading with the helmet.
Defenders argued that both moves were geared to keep offensives on the field.
Joe Flores, an executive vice president and co-head of sports and entertainment for the public relations firm, MWWPR, said although the changes may have been unpopular with some fans at first, they helped ensure that the NFL’s biggest stars — the quarterbacks — made it, for the most part, through the season (with the Redskins’ Alex Smith a notable exception, of course).
“Keeping [quarterbacks] on the field is paramount,” Mr. Flores said, “and obviously making the game safer, too. So whereas that might have been frustrating, I think fans will get used to it. … You’re going to see more competitive games as well. The best players are on the field.
“Both championship games went into overtime, which is a dream come true for Fox and CBS.”
The new quarterback-friendly rules have helped the league usher in a bumper crop of young, marketable quarterbacks in recent years, and many had big years, including Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, the Rams’ Jared Goff, Philadelphia’s Carson Wentz, Cleveland’s Baker Mayfield and Houston’s Deshaun Watson.
The NFL finally has a bona fide class of young quarterbacks poised to fill the shoes of longtime stars like Brady, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers (though none of those three — Brady least of all — seems inclined to step aside anytime soon).
This Sunday’s game, with its matchup of Brady versus Goff, is a perfect snapshot of the best of the NFL’s past juxtaposed against a glimpse of the league’s future.
Protests take a back seat
It’s also helped that the NFL seems to have moved on from the player protests of 2016 and 2017 that made the league and its owners a target of boycotts and criticisms, including from President Trump.
The president tweeted about the NFL just 11 times in 2018, according to Crimson Hexagon, a marketing company that measures social media analytics. That includes his personal and @POTUS accounts.
Mr. Trump referenced the NFL in 25 tweets in 2017.
His last tweet about the NFL came on Sept. 9 during the league’s opening weekend. He also mentioned on Twitter the NFL when promoting his appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in October.
It’s hard to say how much the league has benefited from Mr. Trump’s silence and lack of player protesting, given analysts were unsure how the debate affected ratings in the first place. Before the season, Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis, who closely studies television ratings, told The Washington Times that the protests were partially a factor in the league’s fallen ratings but didn’t believe it to be “the dominant factor.”
“It’s not nearly as big of a distraction as it was in 2017,” Mr. Flores said.
Problems remain
Despite the uptick, the NFL still has a number of long-term issues to address.
Commissioner Roger Goodell’s Super Bowl press conference Wednesday left many fans unsatisfied after he addressed the non-call against the Saints. Mr. Goodell acknowledged the hit from Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman should have been a penalty, though he stopped short of presenting any future solutions.
Mr. Goodell said the league’s competition committee would explore the topic in the offseason.
“Technology is not going to solve all those issues,” Mr. Goodell told reporters. “The game is not officiated by robots. It’s not going to be. But we have to continue to go down that path.”
Elsewhere, Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid’s separate collusion suits against the league continue. Kaepernick is still out of the league, leading some pop artists such as Rihanna to pass on performing at halftime of the Super Bowl in protest of the quarterback’s unemployment.
After Maroon 5, this year’s halftime act, canceled a press conference this week, some wondered whether the decision was made to avoid questions about Kaepernick’s status. Mr. Goodell said teams make the decision to sign players based off solely whether they can help them win.
The league continues to face serious questions regarding player safety, its domestic violence policy and labor agreements. Some like San Francisco’s Richard Sherman predict that a potential lockout or strike looms in 2021 once the collective bargaining agreement expires.
Until then, the NFL will enjoy being the center of attention Sunday when the Super Bowl is likely to draw another massive rating.
“Good quality play, exciting play, good matchups will always drive your narrative,” Mr. Crakes said. “It’s only the stuff emerges when things are going wrong. I do think the league has kind of done a good job of focusing on the things they can control. That’s all you can ever do, right?”
• Matthew Paras can be reached at mparas@washingtontimes.com.
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