Even when they’re crashing and burning, the Dallas Cowboys remain a draw for the TV networks.
While the NFL has announced the unprecedented move of rescheduling the Week 16 Browns-Bengals clash from Thursday to Sunday and moving Broncos-Chargers up by three days to take its place, they will, for now, be leaving the Cowboys-Buccaneers right where they are on that Sunday night.
The two teams currently have a bad combined record of 7-13. NFL.com computes Tampa Bay’s chances of making the postseason at just 34% heading into this weekend’s slate of games; Dallas has less than a 1% chance.
The Cowboys, nevertheless, will play their traditional late-afternoon game on Thanksgiving Day in what is usually one of the most-watched games of the NFL schedule. And on Dec. 9, they’ll participate in a special Simpsons-themed animation alt-cast on Monday Night Football.
It’s too late to move the Cowboys out of either national viewing window, no matter how bad the team is.
And yet, they’ll ostensibly still be duking it out with the Bucs at AT&T Stadium in primetime, just three days before Christmas.
Mathematically, the Bucs could pull themselves back into contention by then and be fighting for a wild card berth (or even control of the NFC South). On the Cowboys side, though, Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth will likely be stuck with detailing the team’s utter collapse this season and openly pondering which coaches and players will survive what is almost sure to be a massive bloodletting once it comes to a merciful end.
The sad reality is, despite both teams’ poor showings thus far in 2024, the matchup remains one of Week 16’s more watchable options.
Under the league’s current flexible scheduling rules, only a Sunday afternoon game can be shifted to Sunday night. That day’s marquee game will pit the Eagles at Commanders, a divisional battle currently slated to air on Fox in the early-afternoon window.
Almost every other possible tilt for the Sunday night slot, however, includes at least one team currently holding a losing record. And not a one of them has the love-’em-or-hate-’em, can’t-look-away clout of America’s Team.
ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit took a shot just last week at this very phenomenon when he joked during a Monday Night Football promo, “Just keep putting Dallas in those high-profile windows… That is a train wreck.”
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And yet, people will tune in.
No one wants to see the 2-8 Giants play the Falcons in primetime, or the 3-7 Panthers host the Cardinals. The 2-9 Jaguars at the 2-8 Raiders is awful; besides, the country will have just been subjected to watching Las Vegas in one of Week 15’s two Monday night games.
Who else is taking NBC’s killer slot? The Patriots? The Jets?? The Titans???
So Cowboys fans may very well be forced into watching their team take one last public shellacking this season alongside an eye-rolling nationwide audience.
It’s important to note that two other teams could still be swapped into the Bucs-Cowboys timeslot; the NFL reserves the right to make a change to a Week 16 Sunday night contest “generally… no later than six days prior to the game.”
But the allure of the Cowboys playing in primetime may simply be too great.
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