Opening game did 3.3 million viewers. For an afternoon game, that's nothing short of great.
Some overall thoughts on Week 1:
-Biggest take-away, I can't believe that it's 2020 and the XFL just successfully kicked off a season without it being a laughing stock. 19 years ago, I remember watching the first game in Clark, and by the third quarter it becoming very apparent that this thing wasn't going to work. Sure enough, within three weeks it was a literal punchline. Everything bad about that 2001 kickoff, it was the exact opposite here. No gimmicks, no sleaze, no WWE, the rule changes actually worked, and most importantly the quality of play outside of maybe the Dallas game was good.
-Am I the only one that thought the new kickoff rules were going to lead to some bigger returns? Since there's really only that one line, it seems like you should be able to bust a big return if you can get past that. Instead, pretty much every return went to the 30. It still works, and it's definitely safer than the traditional kickoff. Wouldn't be surprised to see that in the NFL pretty shortly.
-I've said it before, but I absolutely love the look into the replay booth. There's absolutely no downside to that, bring that to college and the NFL right now.
-As most have mentioned, the other rule changes are pretty great. I was hoping we'd see how overtime works in the Dallas game, but everything else worked out better than I thought it would. initially I thought the 25 second play clock would be too short we run into a lot of delay-of-game penalties, but that really wasn't the case.
-Was a little disappointed in this Sunday afternoon game presentation. Maybe it was due to what was going on in the field, or maybe it was the announcers, or a combination. Refs were more flag-happy, the clock kept messing up, Galloway missing things left and right, and McAfee being a bit of an acquired taste, didn't enjoy that one as much as the Saturday games.
-Crowds were respectable and all four locations, and looked decent enough on TV. That said, given the reception that this is received, I'm hoping that attendence can grow over the course of the season, rather than this be the high point due to it being opening day. It would be a success to see numbers in the 20s or even 30s.