Super Bowl most-watched
The longest Super Bowl game will also go down as the mostwatched program in US television history.
According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, Kansas City’s 25-22 overtime victory over San Francisco on Sunday night averaged 123.7 million viewers across television and streaming platforms. That shattered last year’s mark of 115.1 million for Kansas City’s last-play victory over Philadelphia and is a 7 percent increase.
Nielsen updated its numbers Tuesday after releasing an early figure of 123.4 million on Monday night.
The game was televised by CBS, Nickelodeon and Univision and streamed on Paramount+ as well as the NFL’s digital platforms.
Nielsen also said a record 202.4 million watched at least part of the game across all networks, a 10 percent jump over last year’s figure of 183.6 million.
The CBS broadcast averaged 120.3 million. The network’s previous mark for its most-watched Super
Bowl was 112.34 million for the 2016 game between the Broncos and Panthers.
Some of the increase can be attributed to a change in the way viewers are counted.
Nielsen began including out-ofhome viewers in its ratings in 2020, but only from 65 percent of the country. That measurement is expected to expand to include all 50 states later this year.
Sunday’s game was only the second of the 58 Super Bowls to go to overtime. The previous one was in 2017, when the Patriots rallied from a 28-3 deficit and beat Atlanta 3428.
Patriots to hire RB coach
The Patriots continued to makeover their offensive coaching staff, hiring Taylor Embree as their running backs coach, according to CBS Sports on Tuesday.
Embree, 35, was the running backs coach for the Jets the past three seasons. He also worked with New England quarterbacks coach T.C. McCartney in 2017 and 2018 in San Francisco.
Embree takes over for Vinnie Sunseri, who was the Patriots running backs coach the past three years. Sunseri left to become the defensive backs coach at the University of Washington.
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BC to add Patriots TE coach
New Boston College football coach Bill O’Brien is working swiftly to fill out his coaching staff.
O’Brien, who was hired to coach the Eagles Friday, is working toward deals to name Patriots tight ends coach Will Lawing as his offensive coordinator and Tim Lewis as his defensive coordinator, according to ESPN.
Lawing has worked with O’Brien since he was at Penn State, teaming up in Houston, Alabama, and New England. The Texans’ tight ends coach from 2019-20, Lawing followed O’Brien to Alabama, then to the Patriots last winter and served as tight ends coach this past season.
O’Brien also plans to promote BC assistant Jonathan DiBiaso to quarterbacks coach, according to ESPN.