Mahomes has all of these:
Peyton Manning's brain
Joe Montana's cool under pressure
Aaron Rodgers arm
Dan Marino's quick release & pocket presence
Tom Brady's leadership
John Elway's two minute offense
Drew Brees accuracy
Brett Favre's passion & grit
Tim Tebow's character
Steve Young's athleticism
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https://theathletic.com/2234859/2020...s-must-see-tv/
Patrick Mahomes has made the Kansas City Chiefs must-see TV
By Bill Shea
Originally Posted by :
Call it the Patrick Mahomes Effect.
The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, coming off a Super Bowl victory and three seasons of astounding numbers, has made for must-see TV in a year when sports and almost every other type of programming has had viewership gutted by the pandemic and the presidential election chaos.
Yet when the Chiefs are on TV, people tune in. Mahomes opened the season on Sept. 10 with a “Thursday Night Football” victory over the Texans that got more than 20 million viewers for NBC. A week later, Kansas City’s afternoon game win over the Chargers drew an average audience of nearly 19 million for CBS.
NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” telecast of the Chiefs beating the Raiders on Nov. 22 averaged 19.5 million. This past Sunday, the late afternoon thriller that pitted millennial star Mahomes against Gen X QB icon Tom Brady and his new Tampa Bay team, averaged 23.1 million on CBS.
“There’s definitely a Mahomes effect in that Chiefs games are one of the better draws for the NFL,” said Jon Lewis, the Sports Media Watch founder who has monitored and analyzed sports audience ratings since 2006. “Even this season, the Mahomes teams have been better than most. His star power made a team in Kansas City that was not particularly relevant on a national stage into one of the league’s primetime draws.”
Without the pandemic-fueled audience cannibalization and other distractions, which have the NFL’s overall TV audience down a bit, the Chiefs and Mahomes likely would have even gaudier audience metrics.
“Would the numbers be better in a normal year? Yeah, probably,” Lewis said.
Until Mahomes arrived as the 10th overall draft pick out of Texas Tech in 2017, and took over as the starter in 2018, the Chiefs were decidedly not appointment TV despite quarterback Alex Smith recording his best seasons and getting Kansas City into the playoffs.
“(They) had been a drag or uninspiring. You knew if they were on the schedule the ratings wouldn’t be great,” Lewis said.
The Chiefs also do big numbers in their home market even when games are at unusual times, as Fox Sports exec Mike Mulvihill noted on Twitter earlier this season:
Kansas City did a ridiculous 44.4 rating and 74 share yesterday for a Chiefs-Bills game that kicked off at 4pm local time on a Monday. Fans of the defending champs are not kidding around. That has to be the highest local rating for a weekday afternoon event in many, many years if not ever. Hard pressed to think of anything that might challenge it.
Mahomes, 25, and his teammates were the NFL’s top TV draw this season until Thanksgiving, when America was off work and sitting around with bellies full of turkey and stuffing while watching the Washington-Dallas games (30.3 million) and the Texans-Lions (23.3 million). The nation missed out on the holiday’s third game because of COVID-19 outbreak sidelined a big chunk of the Baltimore’s roster and the Ravens’ game at Pittsburgh was eventually rescheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Why football fans tune in to watch Mahomes isn’t a mystery. His elegant play with his head, arm and legs over three seasons of exciting football has created a resume that includes being named the 2018 NFL MVP, the Super Bowl LIV MVP, and to two Pro Bowls. This season, he has completed nearly 69 percent of his passes for 3,497 yards with 30 touchdowns against just two interceptions in 11 games. He’s run for two more scores.
Mahomes, who relies on co-star teammates such as receiver Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce, has Kansas City at 10-1 and poised for another run at an NFL title.
The Chiefs rewarded him in July with a 10-year contract extension worth $450 million ($141.4 million guaranteed) from 2022-31, with a series of incentives that, however unlikely, push the deal to more than $500 million. He’ll be 36 when the contract ends.
He also is showing up on TV and elsewhere outside of games thanks to a string of commercial endorsements that are the natural byproduct of NFL quarterback stardom. He also doesn’t show up in headlines for the wrong reasons.
“Mahomes has a great image. People like him. There’s not a lot of controversy. There’s none. The sky’s the limit on how high he gets up there,” Lewis said.
Can Mahomes become as popular (or at least must-see, to account for hate-watchers) as Brady? Winning five more Super Bowls would help.
“I see no reason why he can’t be a bigger star. Brady is catchable if you can match his on-field success,” Lewis said.
Even without a half-dozen rings, Mahomes could cement himself as a generational TV draw with his play (and staying healthy, which is no easy task in the NFL).
“A young, exciting quarterback doing these incredible feats – that’s always going to be something people want to watch,” Lewis said.
While Mahomes is helping generate big viewership in a chaotic year, he’s not totally unique in that aspect.
“Anytime you see a QB play well and gain popularity, the viewership for that team will surely rise. On a smaller scale, think how much more interesting Kyler Murray is right now than he was Week 1. That will continue next year,” said Derek Volner, an ESPN communications manager for its NFL products, via email.
Next up for Mahomes and the Chiefs are the Denver Broncos, who may or may not have a legitimate quarterback on the active roster by the Sunday night kickoff on NBC.
Here is a quick sampling of Mahomes-led Chiefs games and their TV audiences this season:
Must-see Mahomes:
Sept. 10 Texans NBC 20.54 million
Sept. 20 Chargers CBS 18.8 million
Sept. 28 Ravens ESPN 14.7 million
Oct. 5 Patriots CBS 14.6 million
Oct. 19 Bills Fox/NFL Network 12.15 million
Nov. 22 Raiders NBC 19.57 million
Nov. 29 Buccaneers CBS 23.1 million
HOLIDAY GAMES:
The Football Team (how dumb does that still sound 12 weeks into the season? Pick a name, Snyder) versus the Cowboys on Fox was the nation’s biggest TV audience since the Super Bowl, per Sports Media Watch. The game “outdrew every non-NFL television program since the 2017 Academy Awards (32.9M) and every non-NFL sporting event since Game 7 of the 2016 World Series (Cubs-Indians: 40.05M),” Lewis wrote. Still, it was down 7 percent from last year’s 32.6 million that watched the Bills-Cowboys on Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the Lions’ lackluster defeat to the Texans on CBS, which helped get coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn fired, had the smallest audience for that time slot on the holiday since the Packers-Lions in 2009 averaged 21.9 million. That was the year after the Lions went 0-16.
DOGS, BRUH:
When NBC lost the evening Thanksgiving game, it filled that time slot with a re-run of the National Dog Show that aired at noon that day. The noon doggo broadcast averaged 12.2 million viewers while the telecast in the NFL time slot averaged 3.2 million people watching very good boys and girls. Still, that’s down more than 17 million from last year’s late Thanksgiving game.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL:
Ohio State, always a TV ratings behemoth, saw its game at Illinois canceled Saturday because of a COVID-19 outbreak that sidelined Buckeyes coach Ryan Day and others. That was a blow for Fox, which would have aired it at noon (OSU averaged 6.3 million a week prior when it beat then-No. 9 Indiana 42-35 on Fox’s Big Noon Saturday broadcast). Instead, the network averaged 2.1 million at noon for No. 21 Oklahoma State edging unranked Texas Tech 50-44. A year ago, the noon game was the traditional Ohio State-Michigan clash and it averaged 12.4 million viewers.
MORE BUCKEYES:
OSU’s game against Michigan State on Saturday remains in jeopardy, and if it’s canceled Ohio State is ineligible for the Big Ten title game – but remains in contention for a playoff berth. Ohio State’s annual showdown with Michigan, pushed back a couple of weeks because of the pandemic, is scheduled for Dec. 12. Fox, likely less-than-thrilled about the prospect of a Northwestern-Indiana Big Ten Championship Game, moved that telecast out of primetime on Dec. 19 and re-slotted it for noon.
VANDY VIEWS:
Winless Vanderbilt’s 41-0 loss on Saturday at Missouri featured the Commodores using soccer player Sarah Fuller as their emergency kicker after COVID-19 sidelined the regular specialists. It got lots of fan and media attention online, but because it aired on the SEC Network it doesn’t have Nielsen audience data available. Fuller, a senior goalie on the Vandy soccer team, became the first woman to play in a Power 5 football game when she kicked off in the second half. Vanderbilt’s woeful offense never got in a position for her to try a field goal or extra point.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL:
On Thanksgiving, college hoops tipped off at 1:30 p.m. ET on Fox with an average of 1.2 million watching No. 1 Gonzaga beat No. 6 Kansas 102-90 in the Rocket Mortgage Fort Myers Tip-Off. Gonzaga’s 90-67 win over Auburn on Friday also crested 1 million viewers.
FIGHT NIGHT:
Another notable sports TV event last week was Saturday night’s Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. eight-round exhibition fight that ended in the 50-somethings carding a draw to launch Tyson’s Legends Only League. The boxing match was a slick $50 pay-per-view production from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, so it doesn’t have Nielsen numbers. The card also included YouTuber Jake Paul knocking out former NBA slam dunk champion Nate Robinson, and the color commentary from Snoop Dogg drew widespread praise. The event was sponsored by Triller, a social media sharing platform similar to TikTok and it reportedly paid more than $50 million for the deal.
(All Nielsen Co. ratings data is via Sports Media Watch and Show Buzz Daily)
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