Lions Could Turn Tables by Eclipsing Cowboys Ratings on Thanksgiving

The late-afternoon Thanksgiving NFL game featuring the Cowboys is typically the league’s most-watched regular-season contest each year. That perennial status, however, faces some new obstacles in 2024 that may at least suspend that standing. 

The 4–7 Cowboys face the 2–9 Giants at 4:30 p.m. ET on Thursday on Fox, marking one of the weakest matchups in years for the showcase holiday time slot. Even after a wild 34–26 victory over the Commanders on Sunday, Dallas is entering Thanksgiving with a roster marred by injuries and its worst record at this point since 2020. Before this season, the team reached the playoffs in four of the last six seasons and six of the last 10, remaining both one of the NFL’s most popular franchises and one of its most reliably competitive. 

Several impactful things have happened in recent months, however. In addition to the Cowboys’ precipitous slide, the team has lost its status as the NFL’s top viewership draw to the two-time defending champion Chiefs. The 10–1 Lions, meanwhile, have soared to become the betting favorite to win Super Bowl LIX, and Detroit approaches its early-afternoon Thanksgiving game against the Bears at a historical high point for the franchise.

So can the Lions in the early window attract a bigger television audience than the Cowboys in the later one? That hasn’t happened in the two daytime Thanksgiving NFL games since 2007, long before the arrival of out-of-home measurement that has reshaped viewership metrics. But there has not been as stark a juxtaposition between Dallas and Detroit in modern history. 

Over at the Meadowlands

The Giants, meanwhile, have their own malaise, having been booed off their home MetLife Stadium field on Sunday following an ugly 30–7 loss to the Buccaneers. Thursday’s game in Dallas is the same late-afternoon Thanksgiving matchup as in 2022. But that game two years ago featured two 7–3 teams that each would ultimately reach the second round of the playoffs, and the matchup drew an average audience of 42 million that remains the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game on record. 

For the 2024 holiday game, though, draft position in the spring is the truest prize on the line for the Cowboys and Giants, particularly as both teams’ starting quarterbacks are either hurt or have been released, leaving the expected matchup one of backup signal-callers: Cooper Rush and Tommy DeVito.