The NFL continues hurting WWE SmackDown viewership

Last night's episode of SmackDown, the go home show to Night of Champions, went up against yet another edition of the NFL's Thursday Night Football, a hugely compelling game that saw the Denver Broncos pull off a miracle last minute victory over the division rival Kansas City Chiefs. That game drew 21 million viewers across both CBS and the NFL Network.

SmackDown, up against monster competition like that, drew 2.08 million viewers.

That was actually up from the 2.04 the show drew last week but a clear pattern has been established over the past month or so that shows just how much the NFL is going to eat into SmackDown's viewers every Thursday night.

Here's how the show was doing just before competition from the NFL kicked in:

July 2: 2.26 million
July 9: 2.38 million
July 16: 2.15 million
July 23: 2.35 million
July 30: 2.44 million
Aug. 6: 2.40 million

And since then:

Aug. 13: 2.08 million
Aug. 20: 2.43 million
Aug. 27: 2.19 million
Sept. 3: 1.98 million
Sept. 10: 2.04 million
Sept. 17: 2.08 million

It looks like it's going to be a long winter for WWE. The good news is the show shifts from SyFy to the USA Network in 2016.

For complete SmackDown results and recap click here and here.