“He’s in charge of that right butt cheek,” Eli Manning says.
It’s Sunday afternoon of Week 2, a little more than 24 hours before the Manning brothers are on the air, and a flurry of voice memos lights up Peyton’s phone.
“The RPOs all look bad, Peyt.”
“I don’t think Kirk was under center for one play, which is strange.”
The voice memos have a backstory: A few years ago, while he was watching a Broncos game, Peyton had to sneak into a bathroom at Empower Field in Denver after a coach called him later than expected. He found himself scribbling notes on a pad of paper, barely able to make out the answers. He decided that day: voice memos from here on out. So this is what the prep looks like — er, sounds like — for a broadcast that’ll earn 1.34 million viewers Monday night: two brothers sending a dozen memos back and forth, sharing every bit of intel they gather during the week.
Like, in this instance, which of Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts’ assets running back Saquon Barkley is responsible for shoving during the Tush Push.
“Got your message, E, and I agree, using the silent count at home is just demoralizing,” Peyton says in another voice memo addressing Kirk Cousins and the Falcons’ offense. “My first playoff game with the Colts we had to use the silent count at home … it was a body blow.”
“Play 51,” he says in another, sighing as he watches a replay of Hurts throwing an interception. “Just a total force. Check it down!”
It’s Year 4 of the “ManningCast,” ESPN’s alternative “Monday Night Football” broadcast that features three hours of brotherly banter with A-list guests and high-level scheme talk spliced in between. As the Eagles hosted the Atlanta Falcons, Peyton and Eli gave The Athletic access to a full week behind the scenes, starting with the voice memos and ending with live broadcasts from inside the basement of Eli’s suburban New Jersey home and the garage-turned-studio Peyton shoots from in Denver.
Peyton Manning broadcasts from a friend’s garage in Denver. (Courtesy of Omaha Productions)
In a lot of ways, both former quarterbacks prepare like they’re still playing. “If you don’t study, it’s gonna show,” Peyton says. He still uses the same beat-up spiral notebooks he did as a player.
Late in his career, he’d have his backup watch a few extra games of film for him — Peyton could never watch enough film — then make a presentation the day before the game. The only difference now is he has his little brother doing it.
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Eli spent the afternoon in the backyard playing football and wiffleball with his four children. The satellite truck parked in the driveway is the only indication that his house will be the site of a national broadcast later that evening. By 7 p.m. ET, he settles into his seat on the oversized blue couch in his basement.
Roughly 1,700 miles away, Peyton’s SUV pulls into a nondescript commercial garage on a nondescript street in Denver. He parks inside so no one sees him, then walks purposely to his seat, breezing past a row of collector cars, and plops his notebook down.
Both are already in their game-day attire: khakis and a quarter-zip. Peyton looks up.
“Bill, so formal!”
Bill Belichick has appeared on a screen to his left. The legendary former New England Patriots coach and longtime Manning foil is joining the broadcast during the first half of games. Belichick is in Philadelphia for this one, dressed in a full suit, and he cracks a joke about the warm reception he earned from Eagles fans. “The site of unbrotherly love,” he says with a laugh. “I mentioned I was with the ‘ManningCast’ and got booed.”
“Did you get the finger?” Peyton asks.
“A tradition unlike any other,” Belichick says.
it’s go-time. But first …
“Peyt, your zipper,” Eli says. “No, not your sweater zipper. The other one.”
Peyton laughs. “Good call. That would’ve been bad.”
Peyton stumbled into the idea a few years ago after meeting with most of the major networks — CBS, Fox, ESPN — about analyst jobs that would’ve paid him ridiculously well. Each spring, they’d fly out to Denver and make their pitches. Each time, he’d turn them down.
Manning kept going back to what his old Indianapolis Colts coach, Tony Dungy, told him after he retired in 2016: “Don’t do anything for a year, then decide what you don’t wanna do first.”
Manning didn’t want to spend every fall weekend on the road, hustling to stadiums. He’d been doing that since he was a freshman at Tennessee in 1994. He wanted to be home. He wanted to coach his son’s flag football team and watch his daughter play volleyball. He wanted to catch more than one Volunteers game a year.
The pull to run or coach an NFL team was never quite there. Colts owner Jim Irsay chased him hard in the winter of 2017, offering any executive role he wanted. Talks grew “serious,” Irsay later said, but Manning knew if he took the job it would consume him the same way being a starting quarterback had consumed him.
“That’s a don’t-do-anything-else job,” he says now.
And coaching? He didn’t think he’d be any good at it.
“A lot of people just assumed I’d be a good coach, and I’m like, ‘Why? Because I can
“Can I call some plays at the line of scrimmage?” I used to call plays when the other quarterbacks were on. We’d go three-and-out, three-and-out, punt, punt. I thought to myself, ‘I’m just not cut out for this.’”
Eli headed off any potential interest from networks. “I told my agent, ‘I’m not interested in traveling for that, and I really don’t think I’d excel at it,’” he recalls. “‘So don’t even pursue it.’”
<p“We understood our dad had chances to engage in (broadcasting) but chose not to, prioritizing time with us and coaching our youth sports teams. We took a similar stance.”
Peyton launched Omaha Productions in 2020, likely making him the first person ever to name a media company after an audible. When co-founder Jamie Horowitz, a veteran media executive with experience at Fox Sports and ESPN, suggested he could call games from home without any travel, possibly alongside his brother, Peyton jumped at the chance. He summarized it for Eli simply: “It’s like we’re watching a game on our couch.”
However, they needed to clarify the concept. How would it function? How could they keep it engaging? “Just have the dialogues on air that you’d typically have off air,” Horowitz advised them. He wanted “ManningCast” viewers to feel as if they were enjoying the game beside two Super Bowl MVPs at a bar.
It’s proving to be successful. ESPN recently extended its partnership with Omaha for nine years, lasting through 2034.
“The show manages to offer both expert analysis and significant entertainment during each telecast,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro stated in a message to The Athletic. “It has truly transformed the concept of an alternate telecast.”
Initially, they thought a host was necessary. So, they invited Kyle Brandt from “Good Morning Football” to the Hamptons for lunch with Eli. He arrived anxious, believing that hosting a show with the Manning brothers could alter his career trajectory. But upon seeing Eli, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“He was sitting there amidst a swarm of kids, munching on nachos while wearing a golf polo and shorts,” Brandt reminisces. “Exactly as you would imagine.”
They quickly bonded. The trio called a game between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens over Zoom. Brandt facilitated the conversation, kept the brothers engaged, and sparked laughter. However, he realized the show didn’t actually require his presence.
“The moment I stopped speaking, Peyton took over like Mozart with the baton,” Brandt recalls.
He contacted Horowitz. “Don’t hire me,” Brandt advised. “Don’t hire anyone. They’re amazing at this.”
ESPN’s Mina Kimes also tried out, but the brothers felt Brandt was correct. The inaugural episode of “ManningCast” premiered in Week 1 of the 2021 season, and by Week 2, nearly 2 million viewers were tuning in.
“It could have been David Letterman, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson – it was irrelevant,” Brandt says. “The show didn’t need a host.”
Eli Manning’s setup in the basement of his New Jersey home is characteristically understated. (Courtesy of Omaha Productions)
On game days, a crew of nine people arrives at Eli’s house by 11 a.m., not leaving until after midnight. Some set up in a storage space in his basement, which has been converted into a control room, filled with a web of cables next to boxes of holiday decorations and football memorabilia. Meanwhile, other crew members utilize his laundry room just down the hall.
“I don’t think my wife realized how much production would be involved,” Eli comments.
Peyton considered using his basement too, but renovations complicated matters. Then he had a new idea: a close friend, Scott, owned a garage downtown. Why not turn that space into a studio?
Scott owed him a favor; during Peyton’s penultimate year with the Broncos in 2014, he suffered through a game where he threw four interceptions against the Bengals. Later that night, he received a text that said, “Do you think Peyton has money on this game?”
That message came from Scott, who mistakenly thought he was texting someone else. “I’ve been holding that against him ever since,” Peyton remarks with a laugh. “After all the stress that text caused me, I basically told him, ‘I need to borrow your garage.’”
Inside the garage, ten crew members operate just behind a wall, only a few feet away from the leather chair where Peyton watches the game. Over the next three hours, he becomes increasingly restless and animated, particularly when faced with poor offensive plays.
He’s a firm supporter of whatever quarterback is on the field, often referring to that team as “we.” “Eli gives me a hard time about that,” he admits. The entire time, he is on the edge of his seat, completely engrossed, processing each play, predicting outcomes, and reacting immediately. He can’t even watch football without investing himself fully.
“They’re missing too many tackles,” Belichick comments during the broadcast. “They’re light. They says.
Beneath their bitter rivalry during Manning’s playing days, the two shared a healthy relationship. Each recognized in the other a mind as sharp as his own, a rare football peer. They relished trying to outwit one another, often with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. Once, at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, the two sat at a bar for hours, Manning sipping Budweisers, Belichick drinking Coronas, talking scheme and moving salt and pepper shakers around like receivers running routes.
Asked later if they gave anything away, each shook his head. “Hell no,” they snapped.
Belichick didn’t know what the “ManningCast” was until he was asked about joining the show this spring. he watched a few clips. “Oh,” the coach said, “I can do that.” But there’s an understanding that his run in the third chair will likely be brief.
“He may be one-and-done,” Eli says. “I’m sure he wants to get back into coaching.”
There was a lag with Belichick’s feed in Week 1 that led to choppy interactions and awkward stretches of silence. It was cleaned up for Week 2, and Belichick hit his stride with some incisive commentary — “That’s a lot of money to pay a cornerback who hasn’t had an interception in 1,000 days,” he said of the Falcons’ A.J. Terrell.
“Bill, do you just have a dartboard with pictures of me and (Nick) Foles on it?” Eli asks, bringing up Belichick’s Super Bowl losses as Patriots coach.
“Yeah, I have three at my house,” Belichick deadpans. “Two of you and one of Foles.”
“Peyton made me talk about it, Coach,” Eli says.
During most commercial breaks, Peyton asks producer Scott Matthews for the All-22 replay on a separate screen so he can break down the play when they’re back on the air. At one point, he and Belichick are dissecting one together. “They need to double-team the sh– out of that guy,” Belichick says.
Peyton cracks up. “Yeah, just say that Bill, ‘Double-team the sh– out of him.’”
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Later in the half, after a lousy throw from Cousins, Peyton raises his hands above his head in disgust. Then, after Hurts scrambles for a 23-yard gain and earns a penalty for spiking the ball after the play, Peyton smacks the table.
“What is he doing?!?” he screams. “Barry Sanders! Just hand the ball to the ref!”
He’s still hot during halftime a few minutes later.
“I hate penalties like that,” he says. “I think it sends a bad message to young people. You make a great play, then you taunt. I don’t like that.”
Unlike his brother, Eli makes life easy on his cameraman. He rarely leaves his spot on the couch. During halftime, Peyton downs two enchiladas in about six minutes; Eli doesn’t eat a thing. He never even takes a bathroom break. While Peyton gets four or five touch-ups from a makeup assistant during commercial breaks, Eli is lower maintenance.
“I’m all natural,” Eli says proudly. “He sweats, it’s his shiny forehead.”
The football part comes easy: Both can immediately diagnose why a play did or didn’t work, then explain it to the audience. After Cousins hits Drake London for a 19-yard gain, Eli’s eyes immediately dart to the All-22 screen to his right. He sees a bigger play was missed. Wideout Ray-Ray McCloud broke open on an over route. Could’ve been a touchdown.
Quarterbacks — even retired ones — hate missing touchdowns.
Later, after the Eagles run a successful Tush Push, Eli chimes in. His prep work has paid off. He’s quick to tell the viewer which of Hurts’ two butt cheeks Barkley is supposed to drive forward. (Turns out, the Mannings have had some detailed butt-cheek conversations on the show before.)
True to their personalities, Peyton is the alpha of the broadcast, directing traffic during breaks, barking at producers, suggesting which questions they ask an upcoming guest. It’s easy to tell what being his teammate was like. Eli, every bit as locked in, is outwardly far more relaxed, reminiscent of the “Easy E” nickname he earned during his Giants days. He also provides comic relief. While his brother frantically demonstrates what a center should do after snapping the football, Eli cracks, “Can we get him a helmet that fits?”
The guests can be polarizing. When they’re good, they add to the loose vibe the Mannings are after: rapper Snoop Dogg presented Eli with a gold Death Row Records chain as a birthday present. When they’re bad — Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to feed his donkey during the show — they turn off viewers whose primary interest is hearing two Super Bowl MVPs discuss the game.
“If you’re not talking about every play and doing play-by-play, is there enough to talk about?” Eli asks. “The idea was just to shake it up, have a little bit more fun with it and break up the amount of time Peyton and I have to talk.”
The goal each week is one celebrity — ideally an ardent fan of one of the teams — and a player or coach for the fourth quarter. Eli and Peyton clearly enjoy having them on, but it can be a challenge to keep the focus on football. On this night, they went from breaking down the beach football scene from “Top Gun: Maverick” with actor Miles Teller to analyzing a 41-yard touchdown catch by Darnell Mooney.
The final guest, Falcons legend Matt Ryan, slides in seamlessly. The game’s getting good, and having another quarterback on the air gives the broadcast another sharp perspective.
“Matt, can you stay with us the rest of the way?” Peyton asks during a commercial break.
“Let’s do it,” Ryan says.
Barkley could have iced the game for the Eagles with 1:46 left, but he dropped Hurts’ throw on third-and-3 from the Atlanta 10. Peyton is beside himself. He covers his face with his hands. Then he shoots out of his chair.
“Perfect throw, front shoulder,” he vents. “That’s why you don’t throw it there!”
Then his mind shifts to the other sideline.
“Kirk Cousins is over there telling his guys, ‘We’re gonna go win this game.’”
That’s what they do. Cousins leads a six-play, 70-yard drive that ends with a touchdown to London to win it. Peyton’s foot is tapping the entire time. He’s nervous. He’s sweating. He’s into this one. One moment, he’s screaming at the screen. The next, he’s coaching the Falcons’ players on the rules of the two-minute offense.
“No sacks!”
“Decline it! Decline it!”
“No spot! No spot! Let (the ref) spot the ball!”
“Don’t score too quickly!”
Back in New Jersey, Eli’s adrenaline is still pumping after the game is over. It takes the crew about 45 minutes to pack up, so he heads to his office, where he’ll check his text messages and read his dad’s review of the broadcast. Archie always watches.
Peyton exits the garage, still shaking his head. He looks like he’s out of breath, like he led the game-winning drive. “People ask me if I miss playing,” he says. “And I’ll tell you what: I miss that plane ride home Atlanta’s about to have. But I don’t miss for one second that feeling Philly has right now.”
The next morning, the Omaha team has a meeting to review the broadcast. Same as their playing days, both quarterbacks will be graded on their performance. Peyton likes it this way.
“You never wanna stop being coached, right?” he says.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Omaha Productions, Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Behind the Scenes of the ManningCast: How Peyton and Eli Manning Redefine Sports Broadcasting
The Birth of the ManningCast
The ManningCast is a groundbreaking alternative broadcast of “Monday Night Football,” featuring two legendary NFL quarterbacks, Peyton and Eli Manning. Launched in September 2021, this innovative approach to sports commentary has captivated audiences and transformed the viewing experience. But what exactly makes the ManningCast so special?
What Sets the ManningCast Apart?
Unlike traditional broadcasts, the ManningCast offers a unique blend of humor, personal anecdotes, and insider analysis. Key features that distinguish it from conventional sports commentary include:
- Casual Atmosphere: Peyton and Eli create a relaxed setting, encouraging candid conversations and a laid-back vibe that resonates with viewers.
- Celebrity Guests: Each episode features notable guests from the sports world and beyond, adding an extra layer of entertainment.
- Interactive Elements: Fans can engage with the broadcast through social media, making the viewing experience more interactive and engaging.
The Format of the ManningCast
The ManningCast runs parallel to the regular “Monday Night Football” broadcast, airing on ESPN2. The show typically includes the following segments:
- Live Game Commentary: Peyton and Eli offer real-time analysis, providing insights that only former players can deliver.
- Interviews: The Mannings invite various guests to join them, from current NFL stars to pop culture icons, fostering lively discussions.
- Viewer Interaction: Fans are encouraged to submit questions and comments through social media, which the Mannings address live on air.
Benefits of the ManningCast Format
The ManningCast has garnered acclaim for its innovative approach to sports broadcasting. Here are some of the key benefits:
- Enhanced Fan Engagement: By allowing viewers to interact with the broadcast, the Mannings create a sense of community among fans.
- Unique Perspectives: The insider knowledge of Peyton and Eli enhances viewers’ understanding of the game.
- Entertainment Value: The humorous and informal tone keeps viewers entertained, attracting a diverse audience beyond traditional sports fans.
A Look at Guest Appearances in the ManningCast
The ManningCast is known for featuring a variety of celebrity guests. Some standout appearances include:
| Guest Name | Occupation | Episode Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Russell Wilson | NFL Quarterback | Discussed game strategies and his experience with the Seahawks. |
| Travis Kelce | NFL Tight End | Shared insights on the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense. |
| Billie Jean King | Tennis Legend | Talked about sportsmanship and her experiences in athletics. |
Case Studies: Viewer Reception
The success of the ManningCast can be measured in various ways:
- Ratings Surge: The ManningCast has attracted millions of viewers, often outperforming the traditional broadcast.
- Social Media Buzz: The show generates significant discussions on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, showcasing its cultural impact.
- Critical Acclaim: Sports analysts and media critics have praised the Mannings for their authentic and relatable broadcasting style.
Behind the Scenes: Production Insights
Creating the ManningCast involves a dedicated team of producers, directors, and technical staff. Key aspects of the production process include:
- Technical Setup: The show utilizes multiple camera angles and advanced technology to ensure a high-quality viewing experience.
- Content Planning: Producers work closely with the Mannings to outline potential topics and guest appearances for each episode.
- Feedback Loop: Viewer feedback is actively sought and incorporated to continually enhance the show’s format and content.
First-Hand Experience: A Viewer’s Perspective
As a fan of both football and dynamic commentary, tuning into the ManningCast brings a refreshing perspective. Here’s what stood out:
- Relatable Commentary: Peyton and Eli’s chemistry makes it feel like you’re watching the game with friends.
- Insightful Analysis: The brothers break down plays in a way that is easy to understand, even for casual viewers.
- Entertainment Factor: The humor and friendly banter keep the atmosphere light, making it an enjoyable experience.
Practical Tips for Enjoying the ManningCast
If you’re looking to maximize your ManningCast experience, consider the following tips:
- Engage on Social Media: Join the conversation on platforms like Twitter using hashtags related to the show.
- Watch with Friends: Gather a group of fellow fans to enhance the fun and share reactions.
- Prepare for Surprises: Expect the unexpected with guest appearances and unscripted moments.
Future of the ManningCast
As sports broadcasting continues to evolve, the ManningCast sets a new standard for how games can be presented. With its unique blend of entertainment, analysis, and fan engagement, it paves the way for future innovations in the industry. Key trends to watch for include:
- Increased Interactivity: Future broadcasts may incorporate even more real-time fan participation.
- Expanded Guest Diversity: The Mannings could invite an even wider range of guests, blending sports with entertainment.
- Potential for Other Sports: The success of the ManningCast could inspire similar formats for other sports beyond football.
