{"id":681927,"date":"2026-01-16T14:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/681927\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T14:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:22:20","slug":"chicago-bears-nfl-playoff-surge-has-nbc-sitting-pretty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/681927\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Bears’ NFL Playoff Surge Has NBC Sitting Pretty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cWhen the Bears are good, it\u2019s good for the NFL<\/a>.\u201d \u2014 John Madden<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThe quote has been kicking around for a quarter-century now, and while it\u2019s racked up a lot of milage over the years, the integrity of the observation hasn\u2019t dulled with age. En route to his Week 10 assignment in Tampa in 2001, Fox\u2019s lead NFL analyst may have been preaching to the choir\u2014the reporter who took down those words was with the Chicago Tribune\u2014but the big fella seated at the front of the Madden Cruiser wasn\u2019t just playing up the hype man role.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the Bears go, so goes the NFL. And NBC\u2019s about to make a killing off that correlation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat John Madden should have had an affinity for the Monsters of the Midway is hardly shocking; the Bears, after all, are the embodiment of his BOOM! POW! broadcast persona. The color of the sort of deep bruising normally associated with OSHA violations, Chicago\u2019s uniforms herald long periods of bed rest and a night table groaning from the weight of so many prescription painkillers. Listen closely and it almost sounds as if someone at the nurse\u2019s station is humming one of Sam Spence\u2019s old-school NFL Films compositions (\u201cPosthumous Playoff Boogie\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it\u2019s been roughly forever since the Bears last reached the divisional round\u2014Caleb Williams was still rocking footy pajamas when Chicago beat Seattle in their 2011 playoff showdown\u2014an audience tends to gather whenever the nation\u2019s No. 3 media market is active in January. Chicago\u2019s loss to the Eagles in 2019 notched the biggest TV turnout of the wild card round, averaging 35.9 million viewers on NBC; two years later, the Bears again helped put up the weekend\u2019s biggest numbers (30.7 million) with their loss to the Saints.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Chicago failed to draw the largest crowd last weekend, that\u2019s not for lack of trying. Williams led his team to a 25-point fourth quarter against the hated Packers, and while Prime Video\u2019s deliveries (31.6 million) were up a whopping 43% versus its year-ago Steelers-Ravens matchup, the Amazon audience came up well short of Fox\u2019s weekend-topping 49ers-Eagles broadcast (40.97 million). Then again, TV-to-streaming comps are still very much of the apples-to-Fiona Apple variety; while digital exclusives are drawing higher ratings with every passing year, paywalled media still isn\u2019t in the same league as free, over-the-air TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year marks NBC\u2019s first shot at hosting the late Sunday divisional round window, and a tight game should carve out an audience of 45 million viewers or better. The pairing of the Rams and Bears sets NBC up with an in-market population of 9.66 million TV households, which works out to 7.5% of the national base.<\/p>\n

\n\tBear in mind [sorry] that it\u2019s been 40 years since these two teams last met in the playoffs, and while there\u2019s no sense comparing anything that happened in 1986 with our present state of affairs (Nielsen at the time was still using paper diaries to determine its ratings estimates), the one-two punch of the markets in play and the plum Sunday night assignment sent NBC\u2019s scatter prices soaring. Per media buyers, NBC\u2019s sales team commanded north of $2 million for the last of its available 30-second units.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of which is to suggest that the other broadcast windows are facing an uphill climb, although ESPN\/ABC arguably were dealt the least favorable hand in Texans-Patriots. While Josh Allen<\/a> and the Bills are proven ratings bait, and a close 49ers-Seahawks contest should go a long way toward making up for a relative dearth of scoring, Houston is a consistent postseason under-performer. Since 2016, the Texans have been slotted into the early Saturday wild card window no fewer than six times, and each appearance resulted in that year\u2019s lowest TV delivery. Houston\u2019s biggest wild card turnout came in 2020, when the team\u2019s overtime defeat of the Bills averaged 26.3 million viewers; by way of comparison, NBC won the weekend with its Seahawks-Eagles broadcast (35.1 million).<\/p>\n

\n\tAs much as big markets tend to churn up big deliveries, No. 6 Houston and its 2.92 million TV homes is the exception that proves the rule. Even the Texans\u2019 year-ago divisional round loss to the Chiefs ended up at the bottom of the weekend ratings heap, although another 800,000 viewers would have nudged the ESPN\/ABC simulcast into third place.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last time Houston and New England squared off during the postseason was in 2017, when Tom Brady was still under center for the Pats. En route to a 34-16 win, New England\u2019s defense held the Texans to just three second-half points, and the CBS audience came up nearly 19 million viewers shy of the weekend\u2019s biggest draw. (Gifted by a Packers-Cowboys duel in the early Sunday window, Fox didn\u2019t break a sweat on its way toward averaging 48.5 million viewers.)<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all the Texans\u2019 past playoff doldrums, there\u2019s reason to believe that this year may see them finally snap out of their ratings funk. Not only is the NFL coming off a 10% boost in its regular-season deliveries, but with an average draw of 32 million viewers per game, the six wild card telecasts averaged a 10-year high. Per Nielsen, last weekend\u2019s NFL deliveries were up 13% versus the 2025 numbers, and while some of that improvement may be chalked up to the recent upgrade in its ratings-gathering methodology, there\u2019s no reason to believe the magic will suddenly wear off during the divisional round.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven the wide-open nature of this year\u2019s playoffs and the NFL\u2019s ever-snowballing audience, the average turnout for the divisional round should clock in at around 42 million viewers per game. And all the story lines are coming together. Allen has what amounts to his clearest path to a Super Bowl\u2014at the very least, the Chiefs aren\u2019t around this year to spoil the party\u2014and Drake Maye will ensure that nearly all of Boston\u2019s 2.6 million TV homes will be gathered around a Disney-owned channel come Sunday. Even the prospect of another low-scoring Niners-Seahawks slugfest shouldn\u2019t detract greatly from that NFC West rivalry, while the Rams-Bears capper has the potential to set the ratings dials on fire.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike the man said, when the Bears are good, it\u2019s good for the NFL. In that light, things are about to get even better than good for the league\u2019s TV partners \u2026 and there\u2019s still a lot of football left to be played.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen the Bears are good, it\u2019s good for the NFL.\u201d \u2014 John Madden The quote has been kicking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,16625,872,6,17681],"class_list":["post-681927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bears","tag-bears","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bears","tag-chicagobears","tag-football","tag-john-madden","tag-josh-allen","tag-nfl","tag-tv-ratings"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115905229241665206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}