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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🎄 Christmas catastrophe. The NFL's Christmas Day schedule looked stacked on paper — now it's a disaster. Netflix's doubleheader features the Cowboys (1% playoff probability) hosting Washington, followed by Lions-Vikings, where only Detroit matters. Amazon's nightcap is worse: Broncos-Chiefs was supposed to decide the AFC West before Kansas City got eliminated Sunday and Mahomes tore his ACL.

🔄 All-time flip-flop. Colin Cowherd spent November saying Sean Payton should consider replacing Bo Nix, claiming the Broncos QB had regressed badly. One month and one good game later, Cowherd compared Nix to a right-handed Steve Young and complained that too many people have made up their minds about the quarterback — apparently forgetting he was one of them.

📺 Goodbye, ESPN. The UFC aired a video tribute to ESPN after last weekend's final event together, marking the end of seven years and 294 live events. The promotion's $7.7 billion Paramount Global deal moves fights to Paramount+ and CBS next year.

🤼 Sopranos ending. Bill Simmons defended John Cena's controversial final match, comparing it to “The Sopranos” ending after the WWE legend tapped out to Gunther. Fans booed Triple H for having the Never Give Up guy end his career by submitting, but Simmons called it a good creative decision that will age well.

😡 Racist backlash. CBS Sports' Shehan Jeyarajah revealed the racist responses he received after voting Diego Pavia first for the Heisman Trophy, with the Vanderbilt QB finishing second behind the winner Fernando Mendoza. Jeyarajah took screenshots of multiple vile replies after his ballot went public.

🏀 Cinderella hate. Joel Klatt called the NCAA Tournament the dumbest tournament in all of sports, arguing it should be restructured with group stages to eliminate the chaos of single-elimination. Klatt said nobody wants Cinderella stories in college football and that fans only want to see the best teams playing each other.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

The NFL’s first real ratings test in a decade

Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL on Sunday. The Kansas City Chiefs were officially eliminated from playoff contention for the first time since 2014. And the sports media response has been predictably apocalyptic: Who will carry the ratings now? What happens to the playoffs without the dynasty? Can the NFL survive without its biggest star?

The answer is probably yes. But for the first time in a decade, probably isn't good enough.

Look at the AFC playoff picture: Broncos (12-2), Patriots (11-3), Jaguars (10-4), Bills (10-4), Chargers (9-5), Texans (9-5), Steelers (7-6). That's Josh Allen and a collection of quarterbacks most casual fans couldn't identify in a police lineup. Bo Nix is in his second season. Drake Maye is in his second season. C.J. Stroud is in his third season. Justin Herbert has been excellent for years while playing for a franchise that averaged 17.8 million viewers in 2024, despite being in the second-largest media market in America.

If the Bills make a deep run, the NFL dodges the bullet. Buffalo averaged 20.1 million viewers last season, and Allen is appointment television. But if Buffalo stumbles, the AFC Championship could be Broncos-Jaguars or Chargers-Texans — matchups that sound like Week 7 in 2018, not conference title games in 2025.

The NFC offers slightly better options. The Lions averaged 22.65 million viewers in 2024. The Cowboys averaged 22.47 million despite being terrible. The Eagles, 49ers, and Packers all rank in the top 10 most-watched teams. But the Rams and Seahawks lead the conference, and neither averaged more than 20 million viewers last season. Still, a Rams-Seahawks NFC Championship wouldn't be a disaster — two teams in major markets, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback in Los Angeles, and one league’s loudest and most reliable national fanbases.

The real concern comes if the Jaguars, Texans, Buccaneers, or Panthers reach a conference championship. These are small-market franchises that have never driven strong national viewership, even when they’re winning. C.J. Stroud and Trevor Lawrence have real star potential, but neither has shown — yet — that he can move ratings the way established faces of the league do.

An AFC South or NFC South team headlining a conference championship is a very different bet — and likely not the kind of uncharted water Roger Goodell and CO. are eager to enter. The NFL has spent the past decade fortunate enough to avoid this exact scenario.

Tom Brady guaranteed the Patriots would deliver elite ratings through 2019. Patrick Mahomes took over in 2020 and ensured that at least one conference championship would be appointment viewing every January. The NFL never had to answer whether the product itself was enough, because there was always a dynasty carrying the load.

This postseason removes that safety net.

The 2025 regular season is up 8% to 18.6 million viewers per game, the highest since 2010. That's encouraging for the regular season, but it doesn't answer the playoff question. Parity and close games drive engagement in September and October. The playoffs are different. The playoffs need stars.

Super Bowl LIX in February 2025 drew 127.7 million viewers, the most-watched program in television history. That game was a 40-22 Eagles blowout that was never competitive. The Chiefs got destroyed, held to 23 yards in the first half, and the game still shattered every record because Patrick Mahomes was playing. Compare that to Super Bowl LV in 2021, when Brady's Buccaneers destroyed Mahomes' Chiefs 31-9. That game drew just 96.4 million viewers, the lowest since 2007. Even with the two biggest stars in football, a non-competitive game lost 30 million viewers compared to what the same matchup delivered four years later.

The floor is high — nobody's disputing that. A Broncos-Chargers game would still draw 40+ million viewers for a conference championship. The Super Bowl will clear 100 million regardless of who's playing because it's the Super Bowl.

But the NFL hasn't just been chasing a high floor for the past decade. It's been chasing growth. And growth requires more than "people will watch anyway." Growth requires stars, storylines, and dynasties that make casual fans care about outcomes in January.

The league is about to find out if a decade of "NFL is always up" was built on an unbeatable product, or if it was just lucky enough to have Brady and Mahomes available whenever ratings needed saving. Sports media loves the mythology around dynasties — the league needs the Cowboys, the league needs the 49ers, the league needs the Patriots, the league needs the Chiefs. Then the dynasty ends, and everyone assumes another one will magically appear to fill the void.

Maybe it will. Maybe Josh Allen breaks through, and the Bills become the next great AFC dynasty. Maybe Caleb Williams turns the Bears into a powerhouse. Maybe another team emerges that nobody's considering yet.

But in the meantime, the 2025 playoffs present a question the NFL hasn't faced since the early 2000s: What happens when there's no dynasty waiting in the wings? When the teams left standing are good but not great, talented but not iconic, competitive but not compelling to anyone outside their own cities?

The answer will probably be fine. The NFL's floor is too high for disaster. But "fine" isn't what the league has been selling for the past decade. And finding out whether the product can sustain growth without a dynasty is a test the NFL hasn't faced in years.

🎺 AROUND AA 🎺

AI is being sold as innovation, even as networks are using it to cut costs and make their products worse.

Awful Announcing's Demetri Ravanos breaks down three ways AI slop will ruin sports television. Fox already aired an AI tribute to Jimmy Johnson during the Super Bowl. NBC replaced Al Michaels with his AI voice for Olympics highlights. Glenn Beck "interviewed" an AI George Washington that just repeated Beck's own talking points. The next obvious step is networks having Ken Rosenthal interview AI Babe Ruth before a World Series game or Dale Earnhardt Jr. talking to an AI version of his late father.

Debate shows are easier targets. Some networks will eventually generate fake debates between fake hosts because it's cheaper than paying Stephen A. Smith $18 million annually. The real threat is play-by-play. Five NHL teams already killed radio broadcasts in favor of TV simulcasts. Some small-market owner is going to replace human announcers with AI voices that run behind the action and sound cheap, and executives won't care because it costs less than paying people.

Click to read the full piece on why networks are choosing cost-cutting over quality and calling it progress.

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• ESPN hired Roxanna Scott as SVP, editor-in-chief, to oversee newsgathering across TV and digital. The USA Today veteran spent nearly 20 years there before a brief stint at The Athletic.

• Zach Gelb is leaving Infinity Sports Network after nearly eight years, with Friday marking his final broadcast. The departure comes as Cumulus Media's Westwood One and Audacy rebrand Infinity Sports Network as Westwood One Sports on Dec. 29, with multiple Infinity talents announcing exits as part of the transition.

• Rick Allen landed at The CW as the new PBA play-by-play voice starting in 2026, marking his first major broadcasting role since NBC declined to renew his NASCAR contract.

• ESPN and SEC Network are pulling back-to-back on-site shows for the College Football Playoff first round, with both College GameDay and SEC Nation broadcasting live from Alabama-Oklahoma in Norman Friday night before traveling to Miami-Texas A&M in College Station Saturday morning.

• Johnny Manziel will serve as a "Field Side Correspondent" for Bleacher Report during Saturday's Miami-Texas A&M College Football Playoff game at Kyle Field.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

"I do think he's sending a message there in his own discreet way, passive-aggressive, saying, 'If you guys don't fix this… then I'm not having fun here, I might have to look somewhere else.'" - Fox's Greg Olsen interpreting Joe Burrow's comments about wanting to have fun again, suggesting the Bengals quarterback is warning Cincinnati's front office after a third straight season without playoffs.

"Put Tom Brady in charge… Not that you can, because he's not going to leave the job that he's got at Fox, paying him over $37 million to run the damn Raiders. He ain't stupid at all. But ask him anyways." - ESPN's Stephen A. Smith calling for Brady to take over Las Vegas' football operations after the Raiders' 31-0 blowout loss to Philadelphia.

"There are some Chiefs fans that wish it were different. There's a name for those people: idiots." - FS1's Nick Wright defending Andy Reid on The Dan Patrick Show, insisting the three-time defending AFC champion coach stays until he doesn't want to anymore.

"You're gonna miss the Kansas City Chiefs when the AFC Playoffs are hitting. You're gonna miss the buzz, you're gonna miss the pizzazz, you're gonna miss Mahomes vs fill in the blank." - Rich Eisen arguing the NFL is more fun when the Chiefs are good, despite widespread Chiefs fatigue among fans.

"I'm speechless. He has control, he's touched, the knee is down... I can't see how we're keeping that a touchdown." - Fox rules analyst Dean Blandino was left baffled by officials upholding a controversial Rams touchdown against the Lions.

️‍🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Philip Rivers doesn't need protecting from the truth

Philip Rivers is 44 years old. He hasn't thrown a football in an NFL game since January 2021. He spent the last five years coaching high school football. When he took the field Sunday for the Colts, his passes looked exactly like what you'd expect from someone in that situation.

Author Jeff Pearlman called out CBS's Jason McCourty and Charles Davis in a TikTok during the game for trying to make Rivers' performance sound intriguing despite the obvious reality that the 44-year-old didn't have much left.

"He has nothing on his ball. He has nothing on his ball. I mean, he's throwing balloons out there," Pearlman said. "If a quarterback is throwing helium balloons, the only way to call it is to be honest about it."

The weird part wasn't that Rivers looked washed. The weird part was how the media treated it. Before kickoff, Ryan Clark called the decision "incompetent" and "irresponsible" on First Take. Analysts questioned whether the Colts were putting a 44-year-old at risk. But once the game started, the CBS broadcast shifted to praising his "veteran savvy" and "timing" as if everyone at home couldn't see what was actually happening.

Rivers doesn't need this protection. He's a future Hall of Famer who had a great career. Nothing that happened Sunday changes that. Saying his arm looked shot after five years away from the game isn't disrespectful. It's just describing reality.

Nobody wants to be the one saying a legend looks finished, so everyone pretends the helium balloons are fastballs. It's patronizing to the player and insulting to the audience.

Rivers knew what this was going to look like when he agreed to come back. The eight-time Pro Bowler doesn't need commentators to manufacture a feel-good story. His career speaks for itself.

The job is describing what's actually happening. Rivers threw helium balloons Sunday. Everybody watching knew it. The only people pretending otherwise were the ones getting paid to tell the truth.