Plenty of factors determine the audience for a playoff game. Generally speaking, the more exciting the contest, the bigger the ratings will be.
Of the five playoff games the NFL staged on Saturday and Sunday, the least competitive and compelling (by far) happened on Sunday night.
Still, 28.9 million tuned in for the 16-3 suffocation of the Chargers by the Patriots, on NBC and Peacock.
It’s a slight decline from last year’s Commanders-Buccaneers game on Sunday night, which averaged 29 million. And, frankly, this year’s number carries the benefit of the Nielsen Big Data + Panel bump.
But, hey, despite plenty of excellent, exciting, down-to-the-wire postseason games, some of the boxes on the Super Bowl Advent calendar still may have a candy corn inside.
Hopefully, all four games this weekend will be chocolate-covered caramels with a sprinkling of salt on top.
Patriots Clips
The Texans outplayed the Steelers throughout Monday night’s game, but the score remained 7-6 heading into the fourth quarter and Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud’s inability to hold onto the ball had something to do with that.
Stroud fumbled the ball five times over the first three quarters and lost a pair of them in the first half of the game. Stroud also threw an interception in the third quarter, but the Steelers could only turn his giveaways into three points thanks to an excellent defensive performance by Houston.
The Texans broke the game open in the fourth quarter as their defense turned a pair of turnovers into immediate touchdowns en route to a 30-6 win that allowed Stroud to focus on how the team persevered rather than just dwell on his miscues.
“We had some problems with the snap, me catching them,” Stroud said in his postgame press conference. “Got to find a way to catch ‘em and take care of the ball. We knew off the tape that they did a good job of punching at the ball or get you while you’re throwing. . . . It’s all about moving forward and trying your best to flush it and keep going. I thought every time we had to bounce back, we made more plays, so I’m proud of our guys for having a little bit of resilience in those moments. To finish the game like that was really dope.”
According to the NFL, Stroud is the second quarterback — Eli Manning is the other — since 1991 with five fumbles in a game that his team went on to win. That history makes it pretty clear that Stroud needs to have a much cleaner performance if the Texans are going to get past the Patriots in the divisional round.
The Texans ranked as one of the best defenses in the league during the regular season and their playoff debut was as impressive as any performance they had in their previous 17 games.
Houston shut out the Steelers in the second half of Monday night’s game and they scored a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns to put the finishing touches on a dominant outing. According to ESPN research, the 30-6 win was the second time in NFL playoff history that a team has scored multiple defensive touchdowns without allowing their opponents a touchdown.
Safety Calen Bullock had the second score on a 50-yard interception of what might have been Aaron Rodgers’ final NFL pass and he said after the game that the Texans are staking their claim as the best unit in the league.
“Shoot, I think everybody knows we are the best defense,” Bullock said, via DJ Bien-Amie of ESPN.com. “The whole world knows that. Every time we go out there we show it and we went out there and showed it today. I don’t even think they scored a touchdown.”
Monday’s win sends the Texans to New England in the divisional round and the Patriots were a lot more prolific offensively than the Steelers were this year. That should provide Bullock and company with a stiffer test than they had in Pittsburgh and a similar outing could send the Texans to the AFC title game for the first time in franchise history.
The New England Patriots are favored to reach the AFC Championship Game.
The Patriots are three-point favorites against the Texans in the divisional round of the playoffs, a line set after the Texans advanced by beating the Steelers 30-6 on Monday night.
The last time these two teams played was in Week Six of 2024, when the Texans won, 41-21. Patriots quarterback Drake Maye completed 20 of 33 passes for 243 yards, with three touchdowns and two interceptions, while Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud completed 20 of 31 passes for 192 yards, with three touchdowns and one interception.
Both the Texans’ and Patriots’ defenses were dominant in the wild card round, so neither quarterback is likely to have an easy day when they meet on Sunday.
Now that the Texans have beaten the Steelers in the wild-card round, the NFL has finalized the schedule for the divisional round.
On Saturday, the Broncos will host the Bills at 4:30 p.m. ET on CBS. The Seahawks and the 49ers will play in Seattle at 8:00 p.m. ET on Fox.
On Sunday, the Texans will visit the Patriots at 3:00 p.m. ET on ESPN. The Rams will face the Bears at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
The decision to put the Texans-Patriots on Sunday afternoon fits with the theory that Steelers-Patriots would have been the late game on Sunday. Instead, the Rams and Chicago will meet in the postseason for the first time since the 1985 NFC Championship on Sunday night.
The Patriots have moved on from one of their running backs.
New England announced on Monday that the club has released D’Ernest Johnson.
Johnson, 29, joined New England’s practice squad midseason and was signed to the 53-man roster in mid-December. He appeared in seven regular-season games for the club. But he played just two special teams snaps in the playoff victory over the Chargers on Sunday night.
Johnson has appeared in a total of 103 regular-season games with three starts for the Browns, Jaguars, Cardinals, and Patriots.
Additionally, the Patriots have released offensive tackle Sebastian Gutierrez from the club’s practice squad.
Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez was having a strong game against the Chargers on Sunday night, until he left the game in the fourth quarter.
New England coach Mike Vrabel confirmed today that Gonzalez is now in the concussion protocol after he was not cleared to return on Sunday night.
“How long that lasts I don’t know, but when they don’t let you go back in the game that would put you in the protocol,” Vrabel said. “So wherever that goes, that goes.”
The 23-year-old Gonzalez is in his third season with the Patriots, who selected him with the 17th overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft. Gonzalez missed the first three games of the regular season with a hamstring injury but started every game after that and had another good season.
Gonzalez will have a week to get cleared before the Patriots’ game on Sunday, which will be against the winner of tonight’s Texans-Steelers game.
The NFL has picked the days, but not the times or the networks, for next weekend’s playoff games. The final decisions will be made after tonight’s Texans-Steelers game.
The obvious question is why?
The most logical answer is that, if the Steelers win, the league will schedule Steelers-Patriots for the 6:30 p.m. ET slot on Sunday and that, if the Texans win, Rams-Bears will be played later.
While that doesn’t explain the decision to not attach a time or a network to the Saturday games, it’s possible that the league wants to have one AFC game at night and the other in the afternoon. It’s also possible that the league realizes the failure to assign times for the Sunday games would become more glaring if the league sets times for the Saturday games.
The league has access to all of the data, with projections as to which games will draw the biggest numbers. And it’s the league’s prerogative to wait until all eight teams are set to decide when the teams will play.
The winner of the Texans-Steelers game should be hoping for the 6:30 p.m. ET slot on Sunday, because every hour (and every minute) counts when operating on a short week. Especially for the Texans, who’d have to travel home and later make the trip to New England.
However it plays out, we’ll likely find out as soon as the Monday night game ends.
The Chargers’ formula for success this season was a strong defense and strong play by quarterback Justin Herbert, but they only got half of that package in New England on Sunday night.
Their defense was the half that showed up. The unit forced two turnovers while holding the Patriots to field goals through the first three quarters of the game, but Herbert and the offense couldn’t get anything going in New England. They punted four times and turned the ball over on downs on the Patriots’ 2-yard line before the Patriots broke the game open with a Hunter Henry touchdown catch in the fourth quarter.
Herbert became a sitting duck against a heavy blitz at that point and finished the night 19-of-31 for 158 yards while being sacked six times. He was able to run for 57 yards, but he offered up a blunt assessment of his play in the postgame press conference.
“I didn’t play well enough and didn’t make any plays,” Herbert said, via a transcript from the Patriots. “When it mattered most we didn’t score any points.”
The loss was Herbert’s third in three playoff tries and the quarterback’s play has been underwhelming in each of those trips. Herbert was asked about how confident he is that the team will eventually break through in the postseason.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Herbert said. “I haven’t figured it out yet. Hasn’t happened, so we’ll have to reevaluate and see what happens.”
Herbert did not point to missing both starting tackles or his broken left hand as reasons for this year’s disappointing result. They were certainly factors, but there’s been different factors each season and Herbert’s been the common thread to a narrative that can’t change soon enough for the Chargers.
The Patriots’ 16-3 win over the Chargers was not a great game, but New England quarterback Drake Maye says he’s glad the Patriots were great on one side of the ball.
“It wasn’t pretty, that’s for sure, but this defense was so fun to watch,” Maye said. “Congrats to them. It was so fun to watch. They won the game for us. I didn’t throw very well tonight, need to be better, but we did what we had to do. And that’s what it takes in the playoffs. Proud of this team. That was fun. That was fun to get one at home and look forward to being back here next week.”
It’s true that Maye had one of his lesser games throwing the ball, completing 17 of 29 passes for 268 yards, with one touchdown and one interception. But he had the best game of his career running the ball, with 10 carries for a career-high 66 yards. And even those numbers don’t tell the full story, as Maye actually had seven carries for 69 yards before his kneeldowns on the final three plays made his official stats look worse.
Maye said his team has believed in itself all season, and that hasn’t changed.
“Just glad we had a win,” Maye said. “Proud of this team. We never doubted it.”
