Ten media-centric thoughts, notes and takeaways off the NFL’s championship weekend
1. Network executives never root outwardly for teams, but I can assure you Fox brass liked seeing the Eagles advance to the Super Bowl on Sunday afternoon. They didn’t like that it came in a blowout, but I digress.
The Philadelphia media market is the No. 4 largest media market by households in the U.S., as ranked by Nielsen as of 2025, and the Eagles are always a strong television draw. The NFC Championship was the key game as far as Super Bowl viewership was concerned. Both AFC teams are viewership monsters — particularly Kansas City. Network execs consider the Chiefs the most bankable viewership team in football, and throughout all the networks I have spoken with, they said they saw no signs of Chiefs fatigue for viewers.
The Chiefs–Eagles Super Bowl rematch on Feb. 9 — Fox has the broadcast — has a real shot at setting a Super Bowl viewership record if the game is tight in the final quarter. The current viewership record came last year when an audience of 123.4 million viewers watched the Chiefs beat the 49ers in overtime. That topped the previous record of 115.1 million for the previous Kansas City-Philadelphia matchup two years ago.
2. So many excellent moments from CBS announcers Tony Romo and Jim Nantz during Kansas City’s pulsating 32-29 win over Buffalo.
First, Romo immediately identified how the game had shifted upon the awful scene of Buffalo cornerback Christian Benford suffering a concussion, after being in concussion protocol for the week. The Bills were forced to bring in backup cornerback Kaiir Elam, who has struggled since being drafted in 2002 as every Bills fans knows (but a national audience might not). Romo used the telestrator to highlight when Elam was in single coverage and understood the moment when he said of Elam, “He’s certainly feeling the weight of the whole town of Buffalo on him.”
Then as the first half came to a close, Nantz let the audience in that the CBS crew was told by Chiefs coaches during their production meetings that the Chiefs knew Bills quarterback Josh Allen liked to go off the left guard on a quarterback sneak. Great insight.
The production team was quick to recognize there were two different official spots on arguably the most critical call of the game — a questionable fourth down ruling with just under 13 minutes left.
And Romo was ahead of the play when Mahomes passed on a 2nd-and-9 from the Buffalo 46 with 1:50 left and Kansas City leading by three. Mahomes found Isiah Pacheco for a huge first down.
3. In an uneven first year on TV for Tom Brady, where he has provided significant value for viewers is when he’s dissecting a quarterback — and how a defense approaches quarterbacks.
For instance, here was Brady late in the first quarter after Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels fired a 28-yard dart in heavy traffic to Dyami Brown on a second-and-16 from the Washington 48: “I consider that a tight window — there is one fingertip, two fingertips. … That’s one thing about (Jayden) Daniels’ game. It’s not just these simple runs and easy perimeter throws. He’s got the ability to thread the needle like he did right there. …
“They [the Eagles] do such a good job in their zone coverages,” Brady said. “Everyone has vision on Jayden Daniels’ eyes. So when he does make those throws, they can break pretty tight on those throws and force a lot of tight window throws, which requires a lot of accuracy and concentration from the receivers.”
That’s interesting, and if you are a viewer, it makes you pay attention to Daniels trying to find these windows. In the fourth quarter, Brady foreshadowed the 4th-and-6 call when Daniels found tight end Zach Ertz for a drive-continuing throw.
4. Again: I believe with Brady’s part-ownership of the Las Vegas Raiders, Fox Sports owes viewers transparency when news presents itself. The franchise just hired a coach — a VERY FAMOUS coach — and there were no questions for Raiders minority owner Brady in the pregame on it, nor any discussion during the broadcast. We could have learned something interesting from the greatest winner in NFL history about why Pete Carroll was the Raiders’ pick. We didn’t.
5. Taylor Swift was naturally at the AFC Championship Game, and network NFL production teams have developed plans when it comes to the most famous pop star on the planet. NFL teams are usually private about where well-known people will be located if they are guests to a game, but the networks will ultimately find out — it benefits the league above all.
CBS lead NFL director Mike Arnold said his team scouts suites before the game to see which camera can get the best shot of a luxury box. Things such as glare, time of day and if the window is up or down all play a role regarding which camera operator is assigned.
“If Kelce has a big play, you tell the camera person if their receiver or player is not involved in the play to see if you can get a reaction shot of her, Kelce’s parents, Jason Kelce, whomever else is in the box,” Arnold said when asked how it works in real time. Viewers saw Swift celebrating with 4:13 left before halftime. But she was barely on screen during the broadcast.
“We of course have had a lot of discussions over the last couple of years and we now have a bit of a standing operating procedure,” said CBS lead NFL producer Jim Rikhoff. “That is [to show her] when it works organically. If Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, you’re going to probably see Taylor. I’m not going to do it just to do it. I’m going to do it and it has to play organically. A lot of times I use something going to commercial because we taped a great reaction shot.”
6. CBS had 80 cameras for the game, including cameras inside the pylons of the goal line and the back line of the end zone. Each goal-line pylon has three cameras in it and the back-line pylon has two. CBS also added “doink” cameras in the goal post, which are mounted.
Arnold said CBS had 35 cameras with people running those cameras. For a regular season game, it’s about 20 cameras that are operated. CBS did not have a dedicated camera operator focused on Taylor Swift, which is consistent with Chiefs games it did in the regular season. Rikhoff said he is a big fan of “Trolly Cam,” which on the right play gives you great perspective on the movement of the game.
7. Fox had 65 total cameras for the Eagles-Commanders, including 30 cameras that were manned by camera operators. Some of the more interesting cameras were two Sky Cams, low and high, camera pylons on goal lines and back lines of the end zone and additional high speed cameras for game action and player reactions.
The Sky Cam cameras can be really effective, including providing viewers a line of scrimmage view from the quarterback perspective. The high sky cam offers a wider perspective of the field, and we saw that view on Jalen Hurts’ ‘Brotherly Shove’ touchdown to increase Philadelphia’s lead to 20-12 as well as the failed two-point conversion.
8. The CBS crew got close to 30 minutes this week with Mahomes and Allen during their respective production meetings, which is a fairly standard allotment for the networks with star players.
“Jim and Tony really have a good relationship with both quarterbacks,” Rikhoff said. “There is mutual respect there because we’ve done so many games with them. They know we’ve never burned them from something they told us in a meeting not to be revealed before the game. We would never reveal anything early until we went on the air. I think they know our crew has a very high credibility standard there and that builds trust and you get more information because of that.”
9. These broadcast stats are remarkable:
• Since 2018 (Mahomes Era): CBS’s top NFL team has done 23 games in Kansas City (including nine playoff games).
• Since 2020 (Allen vs Mahomes Era): The same crew has done seven of the nine Bills-Chiefs meetings, including all four playoff meetings.
10. We will get viewership numbers for both games early this week. Given the second game went down to the wire, Bills-Chiefs has a shot to surpass the 55.47 million viewers that watched last year’s Chiefs-Ravens game. That’s the current record for the most-watched AFC Championship Game in history.
The all-time viewership record for any conference championship game (and also the NFC record) isn’t going to be topped: In 1982, the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers drew 68.7 million viewers on CBS for the NFC Championship Game (forever remembered for “The Catch” by San Francisco’s Dwight Clark).
(Photo: David Eulitt / Getty Images)
