Jim Nantz believes Chiefs-Cowboys will set viewership records (and he's right)

It’s one thing for a bozo like me to say it. It’s quite another when it comes from the guy who will be calling the game.

Appearing this week on Rich Eisen’s show, lead CBS play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz expressed a belief that the Thanksgiving game between the Chiefs and Cowboys will establish a new standard for regular-season NFL football.

“K.C. and Dallas, to put those two gigantic brands together on the most-watched day of the regular season in the NFL, it’s gonna set records,” Nantz said, via AwfulAnnouncing.com. “That’s not what I’m out for it to do. I just hope it’s a great football game. It will be a wonderful matchup to call on Thanksgiving. K.C. at Dallas, it’s the game we wanted.”

It’s hardly a stretch. The Cowboys are America’s legacy team. The Chiefs are the flavor of a month of Sundays. Put them together, and the record won’t just be broken. It’ll be shattered.

Especially on Thanksgiving. Three years ago, 42.1 million watched the Cowboys beat the Giants, 28-20. That’s the current record. And seven of the top nine games happened on Thanksgiving.

The other two? The 1990 Monday night game between the 10-1 Giants and 10-1 49ers, and the 1985 Dolphins-Bears Monday night showdown that gave Chicago its only loss of the year.

The NFL could have dropped any Cowboys game on Thanksgiving and generated a huge number. By giving the captive audience a game involving two destination teams, the league wants — and will get — its biggest regular-season audience ever.

Our guess is that it will be at least 45 million, if not 50 million. Especially since Nielsen rolled out earlier this year some new kind of technique for measuring out-of-home viewership.