More than 40 million people watched the NFL’s two preliminaries for the Super Bowl on Sunday Isaiah Oliver Jersey Falcons , a drop of more than 8 percent compared to last year’s conference championship games.

The Nielsen company said an average of 43.2 million people watched the games. While that’s down from the 47.1 million who watched the conference championships last year, it was a more heartening report than the NFL had gotten only a week earlier. This year’s divisional championship round had seen a 16 percent dip in audience size.

Night games generally do better in the ratings than afternoon contests, but not this year. The New England-Jacksonville contest that ended around dinnertime was a better game featuring the league’s marquee player in Tom Brady. That game reached 44.1 million, compared to the 42.3 million who watched Philadelphia blow out Minnesota, Nielsen said.

After seeing viewership erosion all year, the NFL will be anxious to see if that extends to the secular holiday of Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 4. The Super Bowl is the most-watched television event each year.

The NFC game boosted Fox’s new medical soap, ”The Resident,” which reached 8.65 million viewers for its premiere episode on Sunday. Television viewers had their stethoscopes handy, with medical shows ”The Good Doctor,” ”Grey’s Anatomy” and ”Chicago Med” also landing among Nielsen’s 20 most popular programs last week.

With a prime-time football game, Fox won the week by averaging 10.6 million viewers. CBS had 6.9 million, ABC had 4.74 million Giants Elite Jerseys , NBC had 4.69 million, the CW had 1.53 million, Univision had 1.47 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and Telemundo had 1.2 million.

Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.65 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.95 million viewers, USA averaged 1.5 million, HGTV had 1.49 million and TNT had 1.46 million.

ABC’s ”World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 10.4 million viewers. NBC’s ”Nightly News” was second with 9.8 million and the ”CBS Evening News” had 7.4 million.

For the week of Jan. 15-21, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFC Championship: Minnesota vs. Philadelphia, Fox, 42.3 million; ”NFC Championship Post-Game” (9:39-9:47 p.m. ET), Fox http://www.panthersauthorizedshops.com/authentic-ian-thomas-jersey , 26.53 million; ”NFC Championship Post-Game” (9:47-10:04 p.m. ET), Fox, 18.88 million; ”The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 14.92 million; ”Young Sheldon,” CBS, 13.33 million; ”NCIS,” CBS, 9.88 million; ”This is Us,” NBC, 9.82 million; ”Blue Bloods,” CBS 49ers Jonathan Cooper Jersey , 9.45 million; ”The Good Doctor,” ABC, 9.34 million; ”Mom,” CBS, 9.26 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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Attorneys for a Guatemalan man living illegally in the U.S have ended their effort to have his confession thrown out in a suspected drunken-driving crash that killed Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson and his Uber driver.

Attorney John Tompkins told Marion County Judge Grant Hawkins during a Tuesday pre-trial hearing for Manuel Orrego-Savala that he had withdrawn a motion to suppress his client's statements to a state trooper after the Feb. 4 crash in Indianapolis.

Investigators said in a probable cause affidavit that Orrego-Savala admitted to the trooper that he was driving the pickup truck involved in the crash.

His attorneys had argued in a motion filed Feb. 20 that Orrego-Savala's admission shouldn't be allowed because he wasn't first read his rights.

Orrego-Savala, 37, faces four felony charges in the crash that killed Jackson, 26, and his Uber driver, Jeffrey Monroe, 54, as the two men stood outside Monroe's car along Interstate 70 in Indianapolis. Investigators said Monroe was transporting Jackson for the ride-sharing service David Dahl Colorado Rockies Jersey , and had pulled over after the football player became ill.

Orrego-Savala had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19 percent, which is more than twice Indiana's legal limit of .08 percent, according to court documents. He remains jailed and a not guilty plea has been entered on his behalf.

Orrego-Savala was deported from the U.S. in 2007 and 2009 and was back in the country illegally at the time of the crash, authorities said.

The case became a flash point in the nation's immigration debate, with President Donald Trump tweeting about it and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Braun featuring it in an Indiana campaign advertisement.

Although Orrego-Savala's attorneys have withdrawn their motion to suppress the confession they can again seek to have it thrown out if they wish, said Ryan Mears, chief trial deputy for the Marion County Prosecutor's Office.

Hawkins approved an order Tuesday requiring Orrego-Savala to provide a DNA sample prosecutors have sought after his attorneys did not oppose their request.

Mears said that sample will be compared to DNA found in a pickup truck to determine Orrego-Savala's presence in that vehicle. He said those tests will "certainly be helpful if his DNA is found at the scene, particularly inside the vehicle we think he was driving."

Prosecutors have also said the sample would confirm his identity, noting that he has used various aliases.

Orrego-Savala's next pre-trial hearing in the case is scheduled for May 18.


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