It’s not just your imagination: This year’s NFL primetime games have been a series of blowouts that seem to get bigger and more uninteresting every week. While this is good news for the men and women who have to get up early on weekday mornings, it’s a buzzkill for those who wait all day for Sunday night.

FTW looked at the numbers and saw that night games in 2014 have indeed been historically unwatchable. This has nothing to do with the broadcasts themselves, of course. SNF remains the best telecast in sports, TNF is as slickly produced as any sporting event on television and Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden have settled into a nice groove on Monday Night Football. But the quality of a broadcast doesn’t matter if the product is horrid. Here are some findings that confirm primetime hasn’t been ready for some football in 2014.

1. Sunday Night Football games are being decided by an average of three touchdowns, by far the highest in history.

NBC has broadcast Sunday Night Football since 2006 and it’s been the jewel of the NFL’s primetime schedule ever since, getting the best games and having the benefit of late-season flex scheduling. But this year has been a complete dud for SNF. Through Week 10, games are being decided by a whopping average of 21.4 points. That appears to be the biggest margin of victory (through 10 weeks) in primetime history, dating back to the creation of Monday Night Football in 1970. (In that inaugural year, there was one MNF gave that was decided by more than 21 points.)

But margin of victory doesn’t tell the whole story. In 2011, for instance, the average is quite high, thanks mostly to the Saints’ 55-point blowout of a Peyton Manning-less Colts team. But that year had four games that came down to the wire. That one rout ruined the average.

This year can’t say the same. Only the Bears’ 28-20 win over the 49ers in Week 2 could be considered a “good” SNF game. The game with the lowest point differential was in Week 1, when the Colts lost by seven to the Broncos. But that game was only so close because of two late Indy touchdowns. Since Week 2, every other game has been decided by 18 or more points and many of those games featured the losing teams getting garbage-time touchdowns. Overall, the SNF games have probably been even worse than the scores indicate.

2. More than half of all primetime games have been decided by 20 points or more.

There have been 29 primetime games played this season (through Week 10’s SNF game). Of those, 15 have been decided by 20 or more points. That’s more than half! To repeat: More than half of night games have been at least 20-point blowouts. That’s mind boggling and it only gets worse: Three games have been decided by 30 or more points. A whopping 21 games have had victory margins in the double digits. And just eight of the 29 games were decided by one score.

3. There has only been one fourth-quarter lead change in primetime since Week 2.

Only three night games this year have featured fourth-quarter lead changes. (By the way, we’re not counting ESPN’s second Monday night game from Week 1 in any of these stats, for symmetry’s sake.) Two of those happened in Week 2. The only other fourth-quarter lead change was when the Cowboys tied the Redskins late in the fourth quarter of an October Monday Night Football game. Heck, most of these games have barely been competitive for a half, let alone an entire 60 minutes.

4. Through Week 10, there have already been more primetime 20+point blowouts in primetime than in the previous three seasons combined.

In 2011, 2012 and 2013, there were 14 nighttime blowouts of 20+ points through Week 10. This year there’s been 15. That number is also higher than the amount of primetime blowouts in the full 2012 and 2013 seasons, respectively.

5. Thursday Night Football games are being decided by 20.5 points per game, which is second-highest for any primetime slate of the past 25 seasons.

Though SNF’s blowouts take first prize, Thursday Night Football isn’t doing much better. The 20.5 average margin of victory is just behind this year’s SNF as the most lopsided primetime slate in the past 25 years. In comparison, the 12.1 point average for MNF, which isn’t very good, is positively tiny. (For reference, Sunday Night Football routinely has deficit averages in the high single-digits or low double-digits.)

6. Primetime games are being decided by a touchdown more than non-primetime games.

Take every game played this season in primetime and the average margin of victory is 17.86. For every afternoon game this year, it’s 11.76. That means playing on primetime is worth a touchdown more to the winning team (minus the extra point). That’s staggering.

How big is that 17.86 number? In the previous two seasons (since the Thursday night schedule expanded), the highest point differential in primetime games through Week 10 was 12.93 in 2012.

7. Three of the four biggest blowouts of the season came in primetime games.

Atlanta’s 56-14 win over Tampa on Thursday night in Week 3 is the NFL’s biggest rout of the season. Green Bay’s waxing of Chicago on Sunday night (41 point differential) is second. Green Bay comes in again at No. 4 with a 32-point defeat of Minnesota on Thursday night game in Week 5. The only non-primetime game to make the top four was Miami’s 37-0 shutout of San Diego last week.

8. The schedule is only partly to blame.



Though the SNF schedule wasn’t as loaded as usual, it was still a marquee slate of games. Monday Night Football has more playoff vs. playoff games than in years past, but also has as many non-playoff teams on the schedule than ever before. And the CBS Thursday night sked was considerably better than the dregs given to the NFL Network over the past few years. But even the best games couldn’t help keep things close. Consider:

• Four of the 10 SNF matchups have featured two 2013 playoff teams. One of those games was the seven-point season opener between the Colts and Broncos. The other three games were decided by 26, 25 and 21 points, respectively.

• The Cowboys-Redskins game on MNF figured to be the worst primetime matchup of the season. It ended up being one of the most memorable games of 2014, with the Redskins narrowly winning in overtime.

• New Orleans lost an SNF game by 21 points. Four weeks later, the Saints routed the Packers by 21 points. Two weeks after that, those same Packers went on SNF and demolished the Bears by 41. The Bears had defeated the 49ers by eight points in Week 2. Nothing makes sense.

• To be fair, the Packers-Bears game figured to be a snoozer on Sunday night. But Broncos vs. 49ers was one of the games of the year. It ended 42-17. The New York-Philadelphia game in Week 6 pitted the suddenly hot Giants against Chip Kelly’s Eagles. The final score was 27-0. Pats-Chiefs was expected to be tight. Instead, it was a 41-14 blowout for Kansas City. Flex scheduling figures to help SNF from more dog games, but in an unpredictable season such as this, there’s no such thing as a safe matchup.

9. What’s the solution?

There is none. This is simply a run of bad luck. Whereas the primetime games have been decided by an average of 17.86 points, the 10 games featured on the Fox and CBS national Sunday telecasts (the marquee 4:25 p.m. ET games) have been won by an average of 11.1 points. There was a five-week stretch when each of those games was decided by one score. Even the blowouts (Pitt over Indy, New England over Denver, Seattle over New York) have been compelling in some way. That CBS/Fox schedule isn’t any discernibly better than SNF, but the games have just happened to be more competitive. That pendulum is sure to swing the other way soon.