Dak Prescott appears to be on a collision course with the injured reserve record after suffering a hamstring injury late in the second quarter of Sunday’s damage to the Falcons, according to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. If that occur, the$ 240 million player from Dallas will lose at least four games, three of which are scheduled to air on national broadcast days. While Prescott’s presence would seem to put a shadow over the rest of the Cowboys ‘ season, it’s unlikely to have an enormous effect on the NFL’s TV ratings. Jones claimed that Prescott was considering an “extended period of time” away from the team during his regular television interview with the 105.3 The Fan, but he avoided giving an estimate for how much the QB might be out of action. Although I would n’t dare to make a prediction when it could be, [but ] it’s likely that we’ll IR him and we’ll see how his rehab progresses. A player who is placed on the IR must sit out at least four games before making a return to the lineup. In the event that Prescott proves that, he wo n’t be eligible to play again until Dallas ‘ December 9 Monday Night Football game against the Bengals. Cooper Rush may replace Prescott, according to Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy on Monday, but Jones suggested Trey Lance may even discover some action against the Eagles this weekend. That NFC East fight is slated to air in CBS ‘ regional windows, which to time is averaging 24.29 million people. Among all NFL internet partners, the CBS coast-to-coast display rates second behind only Fox’s America’s Game of the Week superstar, which is averaging 25.59 million people. Despite the Cowboys business suffering from the loss of Prescott, the team typically draws a whole crowd regardless of who is in charge. When Rush subbed in for the beginner at the top of the 2022 time, CBS also managed to scare up a large 27.39 million people for Dallas ‘ 20-17 win over Cincinnati. Per Nielsen, that still stands as the biggest TV attendance for a Week 2 NFL activity in the 21st century. Despite a mediocre 3-5 report, Dallas also packs’ em in every weekends, averaging 22.95 million visitors over the course of five nationwide televised games. The Cowboys ‘ biggest deliveries were notched during their Week 3 duel with Baltimore, which averaged 27.29 million viewers on Fox, trailing only the previous week’s Bengals-Chiefs broadcast on CBS ( 27.87 million ) for bragging rights as the season’s top linear-TV draw. Dallas is second among all NFL teams in terms of popularity on a national TV scale, with the Chiefs drawing an average of 23.67 million people in their first six images. Prescott was forced to play five sports with a broken finger until 2022, when Rush led his team to four victories. As it happens, four of those five adventures aired in federal TV panels, in that span, Dallas averaged 22.94 million visitors per match. By contrast, the Prescott-led Cowboys averaged 24.42 million visitors per match that time over the course of six coast-to-coast channels. A Nov. 18 Lone Star State game against the Texans on Monday Night Football and a Thanksgiving Day game against the Giants are two matches Prescott is expected to lose. Dallas was almost certainly use ALF as their Turkey Day QB despite the built-in, imprisoned crowd of Tryptophan-addled Americans who huddle around the set every month. That said, the last couple of years have been a testament to the NFL’s hegemonic stranglehold on our collective imagination, as the 2023 Commanders-Cowboys game averaged 41.76 million viewers on CBS, coming up just shy of Fox’s record performance the previous season ( 42.06 million ). Fox needs n’t unduly worry about losing ground this year because of the observable shot in the arm that out-of-home shipments have given the holiday activities since 2020 when Nielsen began blending those feelings with its coffee TV information. The Cowboys are a non-negotiable function of the vacation, just like cranberry sauce and whatever potatoes are supposed to be, and tens of millions of people may enjoy regardless of who is sporting the particular mic’d up helmet. Thanksgiving games do n’t even have to be all that competitive, last year, Dallas romped to a 45-10 win over Washington and CBS still walked away with the second most-watched regular-season NFL broadcast of all time. There is no reason for marketers to consider their November TV investments because Rush has already demonstrated that he can get games and draw audiences. The Star’s draw power tends to outweigh mere personnel logistics, despite the high cost of a nationally televised Cowboys game, according to media buyers who paid up to$ 900,000 for a single 30-second unit in Sunday’s Philly-Dallas broadcast. Today, that would be a different story if Kansas City suddenly lost Patrick Mahomes ‘ assistance. Fortunately, that’s never been an concern for the three-time hero, who has missed all of three begins to injuries since securing the Chiefs ‘ best QB position in 2018.