Tom Brady Makes QB History In Patriots’ Win, But ‘Thursday Night Football’ Week 2 Ratings Down From 2017
Despite a less than stellar opening to the NFL season, if there was any doubt the New England Patriots still have what it takes, Tom Brady and the boys tackled it last night in a smashing Thursday Night Football victory over the Indianapolis Colts. The Patriots’ 38-24 victory on Fox in primeitme was just one of a number of highlights for the multiple Super Bowl-winning team, as Brady stepped up to a distinct pantheon of players.
Last night, the 41-year-old made history in joining Brett Favre and Peyton Manning as the only quarterbacks with 500 career touchdown passes. That not only puts Brady in the books yet again, but on Thursday put the Patriots ahead against the Colts.
Or as as a clearly happy Brady himself put it online after the Fox primetime matchup:
When it comes to the ratings, the second week of Rupert Murdoch’s network’s five-year TNF package took a hit, short term and long term, after coming out relatively strong last week.
Facing surging cable news full of SCOTUS drama, a full schedule of programming on the rest of the Big 4, last night’s TNF scored a 9.9/17 on Fox and NFL Network in metered-market results. That’s a touch better than the overall TNF average on CBS and NBC last season, but a dip of 7% in the early numbers compared with last week’s game, the L.A. Rams’ 38-31 victory over the Minnesota Vikings. Looking back to the second week of TNF last year, last night’s Patriots win was down 11% in metered-market ratings from their victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on October 5, 2017 on CBS.
Last year’s Week 2 TNF went on to draw 15.4 million viewers and a 5.0 rating among adults 18-49 in the final numbers. Last week’s Week 1 TNF of the 2018-2019 season earned 14.5 million sets of eyeballs. That’s also exactly the same as CBS’ Week 1 game of the 2017-2018 season.
We’ll update with more TNF numbers, including streaming stats from Amazon, as we get them, as well as the results for Week 2 of the Murphy Brown revival and everything else that was on CBS, ABC, NBC and the CW. In the meantime, relive some of last night’s magic here:
Tom Brady’s BEST THROWS from the @Patriots‘ #TNF win over the Colts! #INDvsNE #GoPats pic.twitter.com/nvrnobDhZ9
— NFL (@NFL) October 5, 2018
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