After a downbeat viewership start to the 2026 regular season, the NFL is showing considerable resurgence with its Week 2 games.
Fox Sports said that it averaged 27.2 million viewers for last Sunday’s late afternoon national broadcast of the Cowboys’ 37-20 win over the Commanders. That represents the most-watched game telecast so far in this season on any network, beating the 25.7 million viewership average that NBC Sports had for its Sunday Night Football season opener on Sept. 13 between the Cowboys and Giants.
There was still good news for NBC Sports, though, as its Week 2 SNF game between the Colts and Chiefs, won by Kansas City 33–30 in overtime, averaged 24.3 million viewers, marking the most-watched Week 2 game in that Sunday primetime time slot since 2015.
CBS Sports also saw a bounceback after a marked audience decline in a new-look Week 1 schedule. The network posted its most-watched Week 2 singleheader ever, averaging 19.34 million viewers, led by the Patriots’ 20-3 win over the Steelers in the early Sunday afternoon window. The viewership figure was up 29% from the comparable figure last year, and represents the most-watched September NFL singleheader on CBS since 1989.
Sunday’s viewership boost followed a 5% audience bump for the Sept. 17 start of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football schedule with a high-profile clash between the Lions and Bills. ESPN will release the viewership late Wednesday for its Week 2 Monday Night Football game between the Giants and Rams, and expectations are high there, too.
After a surprising 13% drop in the NFL’s Week 1 audience, the latest increases show an expected return to form for the league, still by far the most popular programming in all of U.S. television. The most recent figures are also in line with higher viewership anticipated in the wake of another series of measurement changes recently implemented by Nielsen.
The Cowboys, meanwhile, are continuing to be a major audience draw among NFL fans, despite not reaching the NFC Championship game since its march to the Super Bowl XXX title following the 1995 season. Dallas will again be featured prominently in Week 3 as it will play in the late afternoon national game on CBS Sports against Baltimore, with that game happening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
