It's hard to he concerned when it still dominates every other thing on TV. I think there's a few factors to this:

1. The quality of the game has gone down, at least from an officiating standpoint. That's definitely true

2. Online streaming viewership I do not believe is counted in these numbers. Add that (which is hard to quantify), and I think it's a lot less worrisome.

3. I honestly think a lot of people really didn't want to watch the Pats again. I really had no plans to watch.

Then there's the anthem stuff, which IMO, I don't think has made a large tangible impact on viewership. I believe it's pretty far down the list.

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Plus this nugget:

"The viewership this season marked a 20 percent increase from the last time the two teams played in the Super Bowl (XXXIX, 86 million viewers) in February 2005.

The Patriots played in the most-watched game and broadcast in U.S. history, Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks in 2015. The Patriots also played in the fourth- (XLVI, New York Giants, 2012) and fifth-most-watched (LI, Atlanta Falcons, 2017) broadcasts of all time. The Pats-Falcons Super Bowl had 111.3 million viewers on average."

The NFL has been on an all time high of viewership. A drop was bound to happen. And it's still up from 10 years ago

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