Wouldn't surprise me a bit, that show was crazy influential, at least initially. Punchlines came way faster than we were used to, sometimes deliberately abruptly (iconic example of that for me is Peter's instantaneous face-plants, which I still find funny TBH). And people liked the endless gags that were just random non sequiturs of dumb stuff happening that had nothing to do with anything. Fun at first, not enough to scaffold a whole show around IMO, but most folks couldn't get enough.

That kinda stuff really cheapened humor ("mainstream humor"? is that even a thing?) over the long run, according to me. I started to say I'm just crotchety and old, but actually I wasn't then and I thought it was lame pretty quickly after the initial "fun new show everyone's into" vibe wore off.

Then again if it wasn't them it would've just been another, audiences were just kinda "ready" for that sort of humor I suppose, obviously wouldn't have been the runaway success it was otherwise. I'd be shocked if The Simpsons weren't influenced, seems almost impossible with the cultural swell around Family Guy at the time.