• by Wayne Friedman , December 13, 2010

As the season winds down, NFL football ratings winds up -- and NBC gets a windfall.

On the back of continued big NFL ratings -- this time featuring the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys -- NBC grew almost a full rating point to a Nielsen 6.9 rating/17 share among 18-49 viewers. The closely fought game between two major NFL brands rocketed to a 8.7 rating/23 share among 18-49 viewers for the last two hours of the contest.

NBC says the game tied its best result in the five-year history of "Sunday Night Football," the best Sunday or Monday Night NFL game in nearly 12 years. The week before, NBC earned a 5.8 rating among 18-49 viewers.

In second place was CBS. Early in the evening, it had a nice boost of a 5.7 rating/16 share from the afternoon remains of the New New England Patriots blowout of the New York Jets. That's more than double its 2.1 rating for the Oakland Raiders-San Diego Chargers the week before.

CBS then got some strength from the finale of the "Amazing Race," which reached a 3.7/10. All that lifted CBS into a second-place win on Sunday, getting to a 3.8/10, up over its 2.6 average Sunday night rating the week before.

Without the benefit of its own early-evening NFL viewers, Fox could only manage a 2.9/7, good for third place -- down from a 4.7 the previous Sunday. Still, Fox's comedies delivered their usual strong performance among young viewers. Fox had a 3.5/10 against NBC's still first-place -- and robust -- 5.8/16, among 18-34 viewers.

ABC moved up two-tenths of a rating point to a 2.7/7. Most of its shows were on par with their numbers of a week ago. But the network got a big push from "Brothers & Sisters," which improved four-tenths of a rating point to a bigger 2.6/6.

Univision was at a 0.6/2 versus its 0.7 rating of a week ago among 18-49 viewers.