The NFL had high hopes that their all-important postseason games, would reverse the terrible ratings trend which has plagued the league all year long.

Those hopes were dashed after the Wild Card round, saw a 13 percent decrease in ratings from the previous year. Which, put an added sense of importance on the Divisional playoff games this past weekend.

Well, the ratings have been tabulated from this past weekend and, unfortunately for the NFL, the numbers do not look good.

According to SportsBusiness Daily, the ratings for all four games fell to the lowest level in nearly a decade.

According to Pro Football Talk, “The good news, if there is any, comes from the fact that the 21.8 rating generated by the Saints-Vikings in the late afternoon/early evening slot was only 0.1 lower than the 21.9 for Steelers-Chiefs last January, even though that game was played in prime time. The bad news is that the apples-to-apples comparison — the late-afternoon Sunday game between the Packers and Cowboys — churned a 28.2.

“The Jaguars-Steelers game played at 1:05 p.m. ET posted a 20.4, the lowest overnight rating in that window in 15 years.

“For the Saturday games, the 17.4 rating coming from Falcons-Eagles was down from last year’s 18.3 from the Seahawks-Falcons contest; that’s the lowest since Ravens-Titans in that same spot drew a 17.0 in early 2009. The 16.6 overnight for the Titans-Patriots game on Saturday night was the lowest since Cardinals-Panthers in early 2009.”

The shame of all this, obviously, is that with the exception of the Patriots-Titans game all of the Divisional round games were excellent. The Falcons-Eagles game may have been low scoring, however it was a hard fought game that went down to the wire.

By all rights, given the quality of games this weekend the ratings should have been great. But of course, the NFL protested their loyal audience away long ago.