Report: Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Game Scores Big in Tv Ratings, Defying On-Field Woes
The Dallas Cowboys have that winning feeling back, and the good vibes are flowing inside The Star … but don’t let that overshadow how far Mike McCarthy’s team still has to go in search of playoff football.
Yes, back-to-back wins over the Washington Commanders and New York Giants are good for the soul, but Dallas is still 5-7 on the year and in no way content in a “good” position.
At the same time, no matter what the record is, let’s make something clear about McCarthy’s oft-stated “Valley of Adversity” thing: It might apply to the football team.
It does not apply to the football franchise.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when some fans followed the lead of ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio essentially calling for the Cowboys to be removed from the Thanksgiving game?
“With the NFL now willing and able to flex late-season Thursday and Monday games to Sunday, why not extend the flex option to Thanksgiving?” Florio opined. “This year, it’ll be the woeful Giants against the hapless Cowboys …”
And remember when Amazon’s Kirk Herbstreit essentially did the same thing, making fun of other networks (but not his own) putting Dallas in prime time?
“Just keep putting Dallas in those high-profile windows,” he said sarcastically. “They just keep losing games. That is a train wreck. … It’s awful.”
Our response to Florio and to Herbstreit was all about them pretending to not understand how the NFL/TV/Money Machine works. And guess what?
We were right, as we now know the Giants-Cowboys game on Thursday ranks as the most-watched NFL telecast this regular season on any network with 38.5 million viewers, according to FOX Viewership, with viewership having peaked at 41.3 million.
It’s also the fourth-most-watched Thanksgiving game of all-time.
So, sorry Florio. Sorry, Herbie. You were wrong – and there should be nothing “shocking” about this. “America’s Team” isn’t going away any time soon. (Florio is now snarling that the only reason for the ratings is because the Cowboys had a “captive audience.” But the Lions and Bears and Packers and Dolphins also played. Didn’t they too have a captive audience? Why didn’t the other two games also break records?
Meanwhile, moving from the “franchise” to the “team” – and yes, those are very different things – winning cures a lot of ailments, and with the Cowboys still suffering from some of the latter, McCarthy is offering perspective.
“We feel a lot differently than we did Saturday night going into Washington – I think that’s fair and accurate, but it’s a good feeling, this is where we deserve to be,” McCarthy said. “We’ve had a fight and to get here, we’re still in the valley of adversity. We’ve taken two steps forward but we still got a long ways to go.”
The Cowboys’ margin for error is so small that if they are to reach the playoffs, they would likely need to win out and hope results go their way. One loss could ruin it all.
