Sunday Night Football Ratings ‘Steady with Season Low,’ Down Double Digits Over 2015

With ratings for the NFL’s Week 9 games rolling in, some results show a slowing of the tumbling ratings over last year’s numbers. But the numbers still show NFL ratings down double digits over the league’s 2015 season.

As the Oakland Raiders earned their 27-24 win over the Miami Dolphins during Sunday Night Football, the game saw a loss of five percentage points over the same week in 2016. While that might not seem so bad, it was still a loss of almost 19 percent over the 2015 season, Deadline reported.

This weekend’s game, though, was up a tick from last week’s season low, which was down a whopping 25 percent as the Detroit Lions faced the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 8.

Week 9 saw stronger ratings, perhaps because the game did not face the competition from the World Series, as Sunday Night Football did for Week 8. But, even without the competition, Week 9 was down over 2016’s numbers.

Last year, for instance, Week 9 earned a 6.6/20 rating with 18.33 million viewers while this year saw only a 4.0/14 rating among adults 18-49 with 11.67 million viewers, Deadline reported.

Meanwhile, the protests mounted by players during the playing of the national anthem have continued, even among the Dolphins, whose coach expressed his desire that they should end.

Early in October, just as the Dolphins were set to face the Tennessee Titans, coach Adam Gase announced a new rule that his players must stand for the anthem. But the coach also allowed that players who refuse to respect the anthem may stay in the locker room or the tunnel as the song players out in the stadium.

Despite Gase’s new policy, though, Dolphins players Michael Thomas, Julius Thomas, and wide receiver Kenny Stills continued to take a knee during the anthem as the game geared up.

The Dolphins players brought the number of NFL protesters to 18 for Week 9.

Meanwhile, the players are hoping to force the league into mediation to get the league to offer its full endorsement of their anthem protests and perhaps to even to allow players to expand them.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.