The NFL's ratings for the Conference Championships were down more than eight percent compared to lat year.

This year's divisional championship round had seen a 16 percent dip in audience size.

The Patriots' win over the Jaguars reached 44.1 million viewers, while Philadelphia's blow out of Minnesota reached 42.3 million.

The Conference Championships only featured one household name at quarterback in Tom Brady.

The cost of the cheapest Super Bowl tickets on resale sites climbed from $4,500 all week to $5,400 after the Vikings scored the first points of the NFC Championship.

With the game being played in Minnesota, the expected cost of tickets was expected to be significantly higher if the Vikings advanced.

As the Eagles scored 38 unanswered points, the lowest price tickets came down to $4,525 before fees.

The Eagles haven't advanced to the Super Bowl since 2005.

The New York Giants are expected to name Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur their head coach this week, according to sources.

Shurmur is now available to talk and sign with another team after the Vikings lost the NFC Championship Game.

The Giants had planned on bringing him in for a second interview (or meet and greet) this week.

Shurmur, 52, has spent the past two years with the Vikings. He went 9-23 as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

Stefon Diggs expects Odell Beckham to thrive under Pat Shurmur with the New York Giants "because Pat knows how to get people the ball."

Shurmur will officially be named the head coach of the Giants after the Minnesota Vikings are done playing.

"As a player, (Beckham) does a lot of things well, so it's gonna be a fun offense for him to be in," Diggs, who came into the NFL one year behind Beckham, said. "Because Pat knows how to get people the ball. He's special. Good coach."

The NFL's television ratings for the divisional round playoff games were down 16 percent compared to last season.

The weekend's four games averaged 30.43 million viewers, off from 36.22 million the year before, the Nielsen company said. 

Last year's games featured the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, which reached more than 48 million viewers.

While ratings were down, Saturday's game between the Patriots and Titans was only one million viewers behind the College Football Championship for the most watched program of the week.

The New York Giants are expected to hire Pat Shurmur as head coach.

Shurmur was previously head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 2011 until 2012.

Shurmur is currently offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings.

The New England Patriots are nine-point favorites in the AFC Championship Game while the Philadelphia Eagles are home underdogs with the Minnesota Vikings posted as three-point favorites.

The Eagles were also underdogs against the Falcons with Nick Foles starting in place of Carson Wentz.

The Patriots comfortably defeated the Titans in the Divisional Round while the Eagles, Jaguars and Vikings each won close contests.

Brett Favre says he played through a concussion for the Minnesota Vikings during the 2009 NFC Championship Game against the New Orleans Saints.

Favre was asked during a conference call ahead of the premiere of his documentary "Shocked: A Hidden Factor in the Sports Concussion Crisis," about his memories of that game, which he said was the most violent he'd ever experienced after playing 20 years in the NFL.

The game later came under investigation as part of New Orleans' bounty scandal in which several members of the franchise were accused of paying out bounties for intentionally hurting opposing players.

The quarterback said the Saints "came after me with everything they had" but detailed the symptoms he was experiencing as they related to the hits he took that game, which appear to be the sign of a concussion.

"A concussion doesn't necessarily have to be knocked out cold and removed from a game, although the new protocol is in place to remove you from a game even if you're not walking sideways or your arm goes stiff or whatever," Favre said.

"You may even be able to function as if you didn't have a concussion, but if you have head ringing or fireworks or any kind of fogginess, protocol says you should be removed from the game. In that game, there was some head ringing, there was some fogginess. There were two times in which I was hit by [former Saints safety] Darren Sharper late. He lunged at my head and both of them were pretty devastating hits, but I stayed in the game. One they threw a flag, one they didn't. Why they didn't throw the other, I have no idea. If head ringing or fireworks is a concussion, yeah, I did have that."

Six of the top-10 spenders during the 2017 NFL free agency period (Patriots, Titans, Rams, Vikings, Panthers, Jaguars) made the playoffs.

Over the past six years, the cap has jumped from $120 million to $167 million and it has climbed by at least $10 million year over year during the past four seasons. 

After the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, rookie salaries also became significantly cheaper which opened up even more cap space.

The competitive balance changed dramatically as teams had to figure out how to use the new cap space.

“It’s the biggest untold story in football,” said former Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns president Joe Banner. “With the excessive amount of available cap space, close to a billion dollars—some teams can’t mentally keep up with that.”

The common wisdom just a few years ago that free agency was a bad investment for teams.

Sports Illustrated wrote just three years ago that some big-spending teams had learned that “shelling out cash to players who are nearing their 30s can end up backfiring in spectacular fashion.”

Multiple league executives, coaches, and experts told The Ringer that it is changing the way teams are built at an unprecedented pace and turned free agency from a last resort into a legitimate team-building strategy.

“I can distinctly remember the days when it was almost every year, you had to let people go because of money,” Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead said. “Nowadays, I don’t ever remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh, we’re up against the books here.’ Now, it’s more of a strategy. ‘If we keep this guy, what does it keep us from doing?’ It’s not, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta do some things just to get legal.’ I think that’s what has allowed you to make, let’s call it ‘strategic football decisions.’”

The following shows the matchups of the NFL Divisional Round based on DVOA by Football Outsiders for the 2017 regular season with the Patriots, Saints, Vikings and Steelers ranking one through four in Weighted DVOA.

Based on the DVOA numbers, the Patriots/Titans game is the most lopsided while the Saints/Vikings matchup features the second and third best teams in the NFL.

(Offensive Rank, Defensive Rank, Weighted DVOA Rank)

NFC
- Falcons (9th, 18th, 12th) at Eagles (11th, 1st, 7th)

- Saints (2nd, 9th, 2nd) at Vikings (5th, 3rd, 3rd)

AFC
- Titans (21st, 17th, 18th) at Patriots (1st, 22nd, 1st)

- Jaguars (19th, 4th, 10th) at Steelers (3rd, 14th, 4th)