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PASADENA Michael Thomas Jersey White , Calif. (AP) — The New England Patriots‘ competitive but action-starved Super Bowl victory over the Los Angeles Rams was seen by 100.7 million people on television and streaming services, the smallest audience for football’s annual spectacle in a decade.A boycott by disgruntled New Orleans Saints fans, a campaign by fans of quarterback Colin Kaepernick and a game with only one touchdown combined to shrink the audience. On CBS alone, the game was seen by 98.2 million people, compared to 103.4 million who watched on NBC last year, according to the Nielsen company.Since reaching a peak of 114.4 million viewers for the Patriots’ 2015 victory over the Seattle Seahawks, the Super Bowl audience has slipped each year since. The Super Bowl is traditionally the most-watched television event of the year in the U.S., and its audience hadn’t dipped below 100 million since the Pittsburgh Steelers–Arizona Cardinals game in 2009.CBS dealt with a city that held a major grudge. Many fans in New Orleans, where the hometown Saints were victimized by a blown referee’s call toward the end of its loss to the Rams in the NFC championship, skipped the game entirely. Preliminary ratings from New Orleans showed that Super Bowl viewership this year was half what it was in 2018.New Orleans’ Times Picayune newspaper printed a mostly blank front page on Monday with the words, “Super Bowl?” What Super Bowl?”The newspaper asked, “you think the NFL is sad that the Saints weren’t in it to spice up the night?”There was also a campaign on Twitter by people who said they would not watch the game because of Kaepernick https://www.thesaintslockerroom.com/authentic-tre_quan-smith-jersey , the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who hasn’t been able to land a job in the NFL since leading demonstrations in protest of police treatment of minorities.After a season of offensive fireworks and conference championships that both went into overtime, Sunday’s game was a defensive struggle where the teams were tied 3-3 entering the fourth quarter. That’s a tough slog for the casual fan, and the Super Bowl draws millions who don’t watch football regularly.At one point CBS commentator Tony Romo said, “this is hard to watch.” Others were blunter still. The website The Ringer said that “the historically boring Super Bowl sent football back to the Stone Age.”Cindy Boren of The Washington Post wrote that it was “a snore of a Super Bowl.” The New York Times headlined a story: “How boring was the Super Bowl? The punts got exciting.”The words “boring” and “Super Bowl” appeared in the same tweets more than 70,000 times in the past 24 hours. The words “worst” and “Super Bowl” were matched more than 50,000 times.If anything, football fans have been spoiled by a string of competitive Super Bowls after many years in which big game blowouts became commonplace. This year the game’s outcome was in doubt until the final seconds, but it had only one touchdown and few scoring threats.The one growth area for CBS was streaming. The network said an average of 2.6 million people streamed the game, up 31 percent over last year.CBS did achieve its goal of having a large audience sample its new talent show, “The World’s Best.” Nielsen said 22.2 million people watched the show’s debut, the most-watched entertainment show since the Oscars last year and the biggest entertainment premiere on TV since “Undercover Boss” debuted after the Super Bowl nine years ago. Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan remembers all too well the last time New Orleans entered a season with a lot of hype.The Saints seemed like a good bet to make the playoffs for a fifth time in six seasons back in 2014. Instead, they stumbled to a 7-9 record in what became the first of three straight frustrating Drew Brees Jersey White , sub-.500 campaigns before they won the NFC South last season.“Everyone’s going to talk about potential. Everyone’s going to talk about, ‘on paper,’ how good we look,” said Jordan, an All-Pro in 2017 with a career-high 13 sacks. “We’ve been here before. We’ve seen this a couple years ago, when we looked great on paper. Paper doesn’t play Sunday.”The schedule seemingly sets the Saints up to win a season opener for the first time since 2013 this Sunday, when they host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.New Orleans has nearly all key players back from a squad that came within a “Minnesota Miracle” of advancing to the NFC title game. Now the Saints are eager to move on from the 61-yard Vikings touchdown they gave up on their last play of last season.The Bucs, by contrast, are coming off a five-win campaign that extended their decade-long playoff drought and must play without starting quarterback Jameis Winston, who is serving a three-game suspension .Oddsmakers have made the Saints one of the most heavily favored NFL teams — by more than a touchdown — in Week 1.“We recognize what kind of a football team New Orleans has,” Tampa Bay coach Dirk Koetter said. “We’re going to go out there and do everything we can to give it to them on Sunday.”And why not? The last time these teams met, in their 2017 regular season finale Marcus Davenport Jersey White , the Bucs won in an upset.Here are some key subplots that will play out when the Bucs and Saints renew their divisional rivalry:PREMIER MATCHUP: Bucs receiver Mike Evans is one of three players in NFL history — along with A.J. Green and Hall of Famer Randy Moss — to have 1,000 yards-plus receiving in each of the first four seasons of a career. Evans figures to be covered by Saints cornerback Marshawn Lattimore, last season’s NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.33<button class="view-gallery">View Gallery</button> Gallery:REDIRECT::Ranking NFL Quarterbacks From Youngest to OldestTroy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports | Troy Taormina“I look forward to the matchup,” said Evans, who was suspended one game last season for a blindside hit on Lattimore.Bucs quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, starting for Winston, doesn’t sound inclined to look away from Evans just because of who is covering him.“When you have a guy like Mike Evans, he’s going to get his balls,” Fitzpatrick said. “There is nobody that I am really going to shy away from, no disrespect to anybody, just because the talent level Mike has.”SUSPENDED STARTERS: Each team is coping with the suspension of a prominent offensive player.The Saints are without Pro Bowl running back Mark Ingram, their leading rusher last season with 1 Womens Marcus Davenport Jersey ,124 yards and 12 touchdowns. He was suspended four gamesfor use of a banned substance. That raises the possibility that Offensive Rookie of the Year Alvin Kamara will play more snaps, but Kamara was careful not give away anything on that front.“The way our team is trending, we’re an unselfish group,” Kamara said. “If my touches are low, then it is what it is, if that’s what we have to do to win.”Winston begins a three-game suspension stemming from an eight-month NFL investigation that concluded he touched a female Uber driver inappropriately in 2016.“At this point, it’s like any other injury that a guy’s out for three weeks,” Koetter said.ROSTER TURNOVER: One of Tampa Bay’s top priorities was revamping a pass rush that produced a league-low 22 sacks a year ago. In addition to acquiring former New York Giants star Jason Pierre-Paul in a trade , two other new starters on the defensive line — Vinny Curry and Beau Allen — signed as free agents after helping the Eagles win the Super Bowl. Defensive coordinator Mike Smith said Pierre-Paul had a good training camp and has been everything the Bucs expected in terms of his drive to learn the scheme and make it tough for coaches to sub him out.“The guy doesn’t want to come off the field,” Smith said. “He’s a guy that’s played, when’s he’s been healthy, 90-plus percent of the snaps on defense. That is unheard of a lot of times in the NFL.”The Saints spent the bulk of their efforts in free agency trying to improve a defense that ranked 17th Tre'Quan Smith Jersey White , bringing in linebacker Demario Davis, safety Kurt Coleman and cornerback Patrick Robinson. Meanwhile, receiver Cameron Meredith is expected to make his debut for an offense that ranked second a season ago, while tight end Ben Watson returns after a couple of seasons with Baltimore.GOOD RATINGS: Saints quarterback Drew Brees had a 121.1 passer rating against the Bucs last season, his best rating against any team in 2017. But Brees quickly dispenses with the notion that he has Tampa Bay’s number.“We know how competitive this team is regardless of what their record said last year,” Brees said. “They’ve got a lot of really good players on defense. They went out and made some pretty significant moves through free agency and in the draft.“It’s going to be a tough, tough test.”48<button class="view-gallery">View Gallery</button> Gallery:PHOTOS: Saints ready for regular season after 28-0 win over RamsDerick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports | Derick E. Hingle