Last night was the premiere of NBC's new adaptation of John Grisham's The Firm. Despite the buzz that should have surrounded the project - it was a best-selling book and a blockbuster film starring Tom Cruise -the series failed to impress with its debut numbers. However, the law drama's slow start might not be an accurate picture moving forward since last night's AFC Wild Card game stole a lot of the show's thunder. That's what happens when Tim Tebow and his pal Jesus show up for some playoff football.
While other Sunday night programs suffered in the ratings department, the football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos ran away with an easy victory. To be fair, this wasn't exactly a fair fight. Sunday Night Football is always intense competition for any program fighting for weekend ratings but when you add in the fact that it's the playoffs, it featured two marquee teams with a lot of history AND the most talked about player of the year in Tim Tebow, well it was simply David vs. Goliath and David forgot his slingshot. THR reports that the game was able to nab a 14.8 rating among adults 18-49 which pushed the game to an impressive nightly average of a 7.1 in the demo, with 22.6 million people watching CBS overall last night. That's slightly fewer than watched the Giants play the Cowboys last Sunday on New Year's Day, but an excellent start to the football post-season
The sporting event certainly earned every single viewer it got. It was a phenomenal game that saw the underdog Denver Broncos and their fan favorite quarterback take an early lead only to see the boys from Steel-Town give it everything they had in an amazing second half comeback that brought the intense game to overtime. This is where it got really special because, for the first time in NFL history, the playoff game would be decided using the new overtime rules. Before, overtime was sudden death. First team to score wins. However, this year the rule was changed and both teams are given the opportunity to score... unless, that is, the receiving team is able to score on the first drive. And guess what happened last night? Tebow throws an 80 yard touchdown to win the game on the first play in OT. Truly memorable and worth all the viewers it got.
Needless to say, it was slightly more interesting than your average football game. Too bad Tim Tebow's Broncos have to run into Tom Brady's Patriots next week. Or, will the underdogs be able to pull off another miracle next week? Hallelujah!
