No one is more relieved to have the presidential election over than the National Football League.

NFL ratings are down this season by more than 10% on average compared to last year. On some nights, ratings have been down by more than 20% compared to the same game last year. Why the slide? “We don’t know,” an NFL source told Yahoo Finance on condition of anonymity. “We all talk about it and we just don’t know. But once the election is over, then we’ll really see.”

Yes, now we will all really see.

The election was the primary excuse the NFL has used since the beginning of the season, which kicked off on Sept. 8, smack in the midst of the fervor over the presidential election. Ratings have suffered since.

The distraction of the election is what the NFL blamed in an internal memo to its media committee (“There is no question that unprecedented interest in the presidential election is impacting primetime ratings”) and in a public statement (“The dip in ratings over the first month of the season is likely due to a confluence of factors headlined by the attention around our presidential election, which is unprecedented”) and at an NFL owners’ meeting last month, at which Commissioner Roger Goodell said, “I don’t think there is a single reason for it” but then pointed to the election, adding, “the two primetime games that saw our most dramatic decrease went straight up against two very significant debates.”

Yes, the two Trump-Clinton debates that fell on the same nights as NFL games undeniably stole viewers on those two nights. But after the debates ended, football ratings still struggled. Every single Sunday Night Football game this year, and every single Thursday Night Football game except for Week 3, has seen a lower rating than last year.

There are plenty of theories: cord-cutting and the increased availability of clips and highlights on social media platforms; over-saturation of football (three nights a week); lower quality of games (the average margin of victory in Monday Night games is twice what it was last year); more penalties for player celebrations (this is NFL alum Shawne Merriman’s vote for the biggest contributor); fewer veteran star quarterbacks (Peyton Manning is retired, Tom Brady missed the first four games, Tony Romo is injured, Ben Roethlisberger is injured); outrage over the national anthem protests started by Colin Kaepernick (“We don’t think that’s a factor,” Goodell has said).

Thursday’s game will be the NFL’s first chance to prove that the election was the biggest factor. And after an election result that left nearly half the country stunned, Americans may be looking for a diversion. Football could provide one.

There’s just one problem: the matchup. On Thursday night, the NFL’s first post-election game, the winless Cleveland Browns will play the 4-4 Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens, with a .500 record, are in first in their division, the AFC North. The Browns, at 0-9, are the only winless team in the league, and are in last place.

And Thursday’s game is only on NFL Network. 10 of this season’s Thursday Night Football games are also available to stream for free through Twitter; this isn’t one of them.

That means Thursday is unlikely to be the victorious ratings return the NFL might hope for. And the past two games were not encouraging, either: Sunday night presented an exciting, close game between the Denver Broncos (last season’s Super Bowl champions) and the Oakland Raiders, and it still had lower ratings than the same game last year; Monday night presented an exciting, close game between the Seattle Seahawks (2014 Super Bowl champions) and the Buffalo Bills, and it still had lower ratings than the same game last year.

The better test of whether the NFL can hit refresh on its ratings after the election will come on Sunday night, when the New England Patriots, who have the best record in the league, face the Seahawks. It’s a rematch of the 2015 Super Bowl.

The election will be over and gone. So: Are you ready for some football?

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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.

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