If you somehow managed to watch all four NFL playoff games this past weekend, you should be given an award for endurance. The lumbering ratings behemoth that keeps trudging away through scandal and crisis, struck upon the one thing that fans just couldn’t abide: being boring.

And man, was that a boring opening weekend. The closest game was decided by 18 points and with the exception of perhaps the first 30 minutes of the New York Giants/Green Bay Packers Sunday night at Lambeau Field, there was nothing remotely close to competitive football all weekend long. The ratings reflected it.

All four games saw ratings drops compared to the prior year, according to numbers from Sports Media Watch. Viewership numbers dropped too for three of the four games, with Giants/Packers being the only game to post very modest gains (1%).

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ blowout of the Miami Dolphins on Sunday posted the weekend’s biggest drop, falling 17% in ratings to a 17.5 in households and16 percent in viewers to 29.9 millio compared to last year’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and Minnesota Vikings. NBC’s late Saturday match between the Detroit Lions and the Seahawks fell 15 percent in ratings to a 14.8 in households and lost more than 4 million viewers from last year’s closely-matched game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals.

The drop was more minimal for Saturday’s opening game between Oakland and Houston with a household rating of 14.4, down 3 percent, and a viewer tally of 25.1 million, down 1 percent. Finally, the New York Giants versus the Green Bay Packers increased by a hair to 39.3 million, making it the most-watched game of the weekend by almost nine and a half million viewers. Still, the overall household rating was down two percent from last year to a 21.3.

With ratings down across the board this year, NFL executives had hoped a competitive first round would help continue to solidify numbers that had improved since the end of the presidential election. RELATED: NFL Playoff Preview: Big-Market Teams Have League Bullish on Post-Season Ratings Clearly, that didn’t happen. But there is some consolation in the fact that the big boys are just getting started. As bad as the opening playoff round was, the divisional weekend has the chance to make up for it. With the Patriots about to kickoff their potential Super Bowl run, the Steelers still alive and a marquee Packers/Cowboys matchup coming on Sunday afternoon, execs are hoping the drama will quickly ramp up. The NFL never stays boring for long.

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