Sunday Night Football on NBC will feature the Tampa Bay Buccaneers facing off against the New England Patriots. For a viewer who is not heavily invested in the National Football League, nothing significant may be able to be surmised from just looking at the matchup. For NFL fans, casual or die-hard, this game is perhaps the most substantial of the season.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady will return to Foxborough to face his former team, the New England Patriots, where he won his first six championships. New details have recently emerged divulging the split between Brady and Patriots Head Coach and General Manager Bill Belichick, and should make the matchup even more interesting this Sunday night, further boosting its potential to shatter previous ratings records.
On Wednesday morning, “Keyshawn, JWill and Max” spoke on ESPN Radio about the primetime game, and how there should be plenty of content for the media to chronicle to attract and captivate viewers, especially after the game when the hall-of-fame duo meet at midfield to exchange pleasantries.
“Bill’s going to do what Bill does,” said Keyshawn Johnson, former NFL wide receiver and co-host of the newly restructured morning program on ESPN Radio. “[He’s] not going to give the media any opportunity for any major photo ops with him hugging Tom Brady.”
Viewership for Sunday Night Football on NBC has been on the rise this season, with the broadcast drawing an average of over 20-million viewers per week across its multiple platforms over the first three weeks of the NFL season, the first time the network has attained such a feat since 2016. This Sunday’s matchup though, thanks to the storylines and drama surrounding it, could eclipse those ratings… and considerably do so.
Just take the game trailer created by NBC, using “Hello” by Adele, a slow pop ballad to promote a football game. Uncharacteristic for sure, but appropriate based on the circumstances of this matchup. And it’s drawing viewers — nearly one million of them on Twitter in just two days.
The morning radio show welcomed former Major League Baseball player and current MLB Network analyst Mark DeRosa on the program to talk about the postseason set to commence next week, but even he could not resist commenting on the highly-anticipated matchup coming up at the end of the week.
“I watched that Sunday Night Football trailer with Adele’s ‘Hello’ track underneath it about thirty times yesterday,” said DeRosa. “I cannot wait.”
Former New England Patriots tight end Benjamin Watson also joined the show to talk about the upcoming Brady vs. Belichick matchup, and echoed DeRosa’s sentiments regarding the trailer created by NBC.
“You got to hype it up,” said Watson. “You got to get people watching. That’s part of the deal.”