In the end, the widely-anticipated Monday night game between the Patriots and the Saints was slightly less widely anticipated than the widely-anticipated Monday night game from two months ago between the Packers and the Vikings.
The most recent edition of ESPN’s Monday Night Football drew 21.4 million viewers, 800,000 eyeballs shy of the 21.8 million viewers who tuned in for Favre’s first foray against his former team.
In New Orleans, the game scored a 66.7 rating, which means that two out of every three televisions, including those that were turned off, were tuned in to the game.
The national rating was 15.0, only 0.3 lower than the national rating generated by Packers-Vikings.
Though no further game on the MNF docket will generate similar interest, Bristol gets the Packers again this week, and the Vikings for the final Monday night game of the year, a Soldier Field showdown against a Bears team that Favre and company steamrolled on Sunday.