“Andrew Lincoln’s highly hyped exit from ‘The Walking Dead’ caught a lot of people’s attention” this past Sunday night, but that wasn’t the huge ratings winner of the evening, reports Deadline.

“Scoring a TV touchdown” – as Deadline put it – was NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” match-up between the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers. “The game drew a massive 23.7 million viewers and an obviously night topping 7.4/28 rating among adults 18-49,” says Deadline.

Looking at primetime on the four major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox – for the year, this huge audience number was the largest garnered by any of “the Big 4 since the 26.5 million” people who watched the Academy Awards on ABC back on March 5th, Deadline writes.