LOS ANGELES (AP) — Chicago's come-from-behind victory over Green Bay in Saturday's wild-card round became the first NFL game to have over 30 million viewers on a streaming service.
The Bears' 31-27 victory averaged 31.61 million on Amazon Prime Video, according to Nielsen, and broke the previous standard by 4 million. That mark was set on Christmas Day, when Minnesota's win over Detroit averaged 27.52 million on Netflix.
Chicago trailed 27-16 with just under seven minutes left in the fourth quarter before Caleb Williams threw a pair of touchdown passes to lead the Bears to their first playoff win since the 2010 season.
It was the second year that Prime Video has had a playoff game. Last year's wild-card game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens averaged 22.07 million.
It was the third season the NFL has streamed the Saturday night wild-card game. The AFC wild-card game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs during the 2023 season averaged 23 million on Peacock.
Four of the five games on Saturday and Sunday delivered increases from last year.
Some of the increase can be attributed to a change in the way viewers are counted. Nielsen began using its Big Data + Panel methodology for all events last September with the start of the current television season.
Earlier this year, Nielsen began measuring out-of-home viewers for all states but Hawaii and Alaska, along with including data from smart TVs along with cable and satellite set-top boxes.
Nielsen previously measured only the top 44 media markets, which covered 65% of the country.
The most-watched game of the weekend was the Sunday late-afternoon game between San Francisco and Philadelphia, which averaged 41 million on Fox. That's a 14% increase over last year's game between the Eagles and Green Bay in that timeslot.
The 49ers' 23-19 victory was the most-watched wild-card game on any network since the 2021 season, when San Francisco against Dallas averaged 41.5 million on CBS.
Sunday's game between Buffalo and Jacksonville averaged 32.71 million on CBS, making the Bills' 27-24 win the most-watched early Sunday AFC wild-card game on any network. It was also a 5% jump over last year's contest between the Bills and Denver.
Fox also had Saturday afternoon's game between the Los Angeles Rams and Carolina. The Rams' 34-31 win averaged 27.98 million, up 7% from last year's matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Houston on CBS.
It was the most-watched Saturday afternoon wild-card game since NBC averaged 28.30 million for New Orleans against Seattle in 2011.
New England's 16-3 victory over the Chargers on NBC averaged 28.9 million, down slightly from the 29 million for last year's Washington-Tampa Bay game.
It was the most-watched prime-time event since last February's Super Bowl on Fox.
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Chicago Bears' DJ Moore catches a touchdown pass during the second half of an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Green Bay Packers Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Huh)
Chicago Bears' Caleb Williams celebrates after an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Green Bay Packers Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Wildlife crews are no longer actively searching for two juvenile gray wolves who were part of a pack that killed dozens of cows and calves last summer in Northern California’s Sierra Valley, an official said Tuesday.
The two wolves were members of the Beyem Seyo pack that in 2025 killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in a seven-month period, according to a report released last week by two researchers with the University of California, Davis.
Wolves in the state are protected under California law and the federal Endangered Species Act. Under former President Joe Biden, officials said they planned a first-ever national recovery plan for wolves, but President Donald Trump’s administration ended that initiative in November.
In October, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had euthanized four gray wolves — three adults and a juvenile — from the Beyem Seyo pack after “an unprecedented level of livestock attacks across the Sierra Valley” by a single wolf pack since the canids returned to the state. It also said it planned to capture and relocate the remaining two wolves to wildlife facilities to prevent their behavior from spreading to other wolves in California.
Gray wolves primarily prey on wild animals like deer and elk, not livestock, but the pack became used to killing cows and calves, the department said.
“These wolves had become habituated to preying on cattle, a feeding pattern that persisted and was being taught to their offspring which would leave to form their own packs and could teach them the same cattle-preying behavior,” the department said at the time.
But following weeks of searching for the remaining two wolves, officials have “reduced efforts to capture” them, Katie Talbot, CDFW Deputy Director of Public Affairs, said in a statement.
“Despite best efforts from CDFW’s expert wolf biologists and law enforcement officers, we have not been able to find or get close enough to these young wolves to safely capture them,” Talbot said.
“We remain hopeful our continued remote monitoring will allow for sightings that will lead to safe capture of these juveniles," she added.
Talbot said that CDFW crews will be working this week on capturing wolves and collaring them throughout the state, including in the Sierra Valley.
Wildlife officials tried for months to prevent the pack from attacking farm animals by using drones, nonlethal bean bags, installing flags or rope to deter them and having officers in the field 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but their efforts failed.
“The efforts that the (CDFW) made were tremendous and heroic but it was too late.” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
She said that cattle ranchers in the area should have been taking proactive prevention measures for years, including increased human presence around the cattle, keeping the livestock bunched up instead of letting them loose on large grazing pastures, and calving at the same time of year that deer and elk are birthing so wolves have a source of wild prey.
“Ranchers in California have been on notice that wolves were coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They have been on notice they would establish packs since 2015,” when the first pack was confirmed in Siskiyou County, Weiss said.
Gray wolves were eradicated in California early in the last century because of their perceived threat to livestock, with the last known native wolf killed in 1924 in Lassen County. Since their reintroduction in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they’ve proliferated throughout the West. The recovering population has meant increasing conflict with ranchers.
“It was a horrible summer here for everybody and the emotional strain was probably worse than the financial strain for most people. They did the right thing. We couldn’t go on living the way we were living,” said Rick Roberti, a cattle rancher in Plumas County and president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, who lost several animals.
Economist Tina Saitone and researcher Tracy Schohr said in UC Davis’ quarterly agricultural economics update released Friday that the Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the entire wolf population of Montana killed in 2024 and the killings of farm animals by the wolves in Wyoming in 2023.
In Montana, the state’s 1,100 wolves killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and Wyoming’s 352 wolves killed 49 livestock in 2023, the scientists said.
In California, about 70 gray wolves were responsible for 175 livestock kills between January and October of last year, with the Beyem Seyo pack responsible for half of the killings, according to CDFW data.
Roberti said the attacks on livestock in Plumas and Sierra counties left many ranchers angry. He said he would like to see certain areas in the state declared “special zones” where people are allowed to hunt wolves that attack livestock.
“We’re pretty much in unison about thinking that it would help if we started taking out the ones that are just killing cattle and are too habituated to man or they’re not afraid of us,” he said.
The predators are a long way from recovery, Weiss said, adding that killing them is not a long-term solution.
“The scientific literature is pretty conclusory that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can result in there being more conflicts with livestock," she said.
FILE - This remote camera image provided by the U.S. Forest Service shows a female gray wolf and two of the three pups born in 2017 in the wilds of Lassen National Forest in northern California on June 29, 2017. (U.S. Forest Service via AP, File)
