This week’s NFL ratings will show that an average of around 8 million people watched Thursday night’s Rams-Raiders classic on Amazon Prime Video. But when Baker Mayfield started the Rams’ penultimate drive, down 16-3 with just over 12 minutes left in the game, the entire viewing audience probably consisted entirely of Rams fans, Raiders fans, desperate Thursday night gamblers and me … and I was paying about as much attention to the game as Al Michaels, who sounded like he was phoning it in from the Men’s Grill at Riviera.
And then, sports did what sports does, enrapturing all 38 of us still watching what had been, up to then, messy roadkill of a game.