Peyton and Eli Manning have carved out an interesting little niche on ESPN. On a number of occasions during the NFL season, the two brothers host their own simulcast of Monday Night Football called the ManningCast, where they’ll discuss the game as it is happening and welcome guests, which can get off the rails pretty quickly.
There’s a tough balance for the brothers to strike, with one frequent line of criticism being that they can get too sidetracked by the conversations they have with their guests at the expense of the game happening in front of them. But this year, Peyton Manning says that is going to change, which he explained on the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast.
“We have these guests on, we’ve learned that when we’re interviewing a guest about why they love football, we’ve gotta cut them off and say, ‘hold that thought, I’ve gotta tell you what Aaron Rodgers just did here,’” Manning said. “Eli and I weren’t doing that enough because we didn’t want to be rude. We didn’t want to interrupt y’all, but fans have kind of spoken in a little study that we did and said hey, we want to hear about the big plays that happen.”
Personally, I know my favorite stuff on the ManningCast comes when Eli and Peyton dive deep into breaking down what just happened during a game — Peyton, in particular, is unable to turn off the thing in his brain that made him such an incredible quarterback when something gets him really riled up, which makes for incredibly compelling television. For as much as it’s great that they can get guests and steer their conversations into some pretty strange places, at the end of the day, the ManningCast is a place for a pair of Super Bowl MVPs to talk ball, and it’s good to see that will be a priority this season.
[h/t Awful Announcing]