Picture the television ratings muscle of the NFL team that from 1996 to 2015 won just four more games than it lost, rolled through six head coaches and made eight scattered playoff appearances with three early-round wins, just two _ TWO! _ of those playoff victories since the turn of the century.
A Nielsen ratings disaster? Not if we're talking Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys, the gold standard of TV ratings in the NFL.
Jones banked early on America's Team lore and Super Bowl victories in 1992, '93 and '95, and now with rookie sensations Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott leading the way to an 11-2 record, this 2016 squad is blowing up the TV ratings at the same time that the league's commissioner ponders an NFL-wide ratings plunge.
Five of the top six most-watched NFL games this year have involved the Cowboys, according to Sports Media Watch, and NBC Sunday Night Football has been "flexing" Sunday's schedules to move Dallas into the prime-time slot, including the recent loss to the Giants and Sunday's game against the Buccaneers.
The Cowboys are lined up to become the first NFL team to play four consecutive night games, with three in a row on NBC _ and that's no accident. The prime-time run started on NBC Thursday Night Football at Minnesota, which drew 23.5 million viewers, the largest audience in the history of Thursday Night Football dating back to 2006.
"One of the things you can always count on is there is always something swirling around them and they are never dull. Like a great made-for-TV drama, you never know where the twists and turns may come, only that you know they will," said Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football.
"Jerry Jones has done a masterful job keeping them relevant, regardless of the record. Exhilarating wins, crushing defeats, larger than life personalities and everything in between. America never grows tired."
Last Sunday night's game against the division rival New York Giants attracted 26.5 million viewers, according to NBC Sports, making it the most-watched Week 14 prime-time game in 27 years.
Dallas' Thanksgiving Day matchup against Washington drew a whopping 35.1 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season game in FOX Sports history, and the most-watched regular-season game since Dallas and Kansas City drew 35.7 million on Thanksgiving Day in 1995.
Week 10's game at Pittsburgh drew a 17.8 overnight rating, which was the highest overnight of the season, topping the Week 6 Cowboys game against the Packers. The Week 11 game at winless Cleveland, a noon kickoff, easily rated the highest for the early doubleheader window this season.
The Cowboys have played in the most-watched game in seven of this season's first 14 weeks (which includes a bye week). Five times they played in the second most-watched game and once in the third-most watched game.
And in this year of declining league ratings, Cowboys games twice measured as the only game of that week in any time slot to attract more viewers than the same week the previous season.
"Like the Yankees in baseball, people love to hate them as much they love to love them," Gaudelli said. "When you look at the success of Sunday Night Football on NBC, look at how many appearances the Dallas Cowboys have made in the history of the series."
