NFL Makes Announcement Regarding Super Wild Card Weekend

The NFL announced Friday morning that Super Wild Card Weekend, which falls on January 15-17, 2022 this season, will include a Monday night game. 

The weekend will have two games on Saturday, three games on Sunday, and conclude with a Monday night showdown to wrap up the first weekend of the playoffs. In recent years, the slate filled both Saturday and Sunday, as the Wild Card Weekend fell just before the Monday night College Football Playoff National Championship.

This season, after the NFL added an additional regular season game to bring the total to 17 games over an 18-week season, the conflict with the college level will not be an issue. The national championship is set to take place on Jan. 10, 2022 in Indianapolis.

NBC’s Peter King previously floated this idea of a Monday night addition to the weekend.

“I think it’s somewhere between 50-50 and very likely,” King said regarding the potential change.

Last season, the NFL added an additional wild card team to bring the total to the four division champions plus three wild card bids per conference.

The top seed in both the AFC and the NFC receives a bye, while the other seeds are paired up as follows: No. 2 takes on No. 7, No. 3 plays No. 6, and No. 4 and No. 5 square off.

Which networks get which slots is still undecided, but CBS and NBC will each air two games while Fox and ESPN have one a piece. NBC will broadcast this year’s Super Bowl from SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

Ratings for last year’s Super Wild Card Weekend were down

The first Super Wild Card Weekend, which saw the added seeds and brought the total to six games, did not do very well in the ratings arena last season.

The Bears-Saints contest, which aired on CBS, CBS All-Access and Nickelodeon for a special version of the broadcast, had an estimated 30.65 million viewers, which was down 15% in viewership from the same window last year when the Eagles played the Seahawks on NBC.

The game was, however, the most-watched CBS Wild Card game since 2014.

The Sunday Night Football game on NBC between the Browns and the Steelers saw 24.78 million viewers, and there was not a standard of comparison since there was not a Sunday primetime game the previous year. However, the aforementioned Eagles-Seahawks game on NBC on Sunday afternoon in 2020 saw 35.12 million viewers.

The Colts-Bills game last season was the least-watched Wild Card game on any network since 2003.