Professional football is the most popular sport in America and maybe in his hemisphere, so that probably puts me in the minority in thinking it borders on completely boring compared to the college game and compared to the way the pro game was played when I was a kid.
Weather. Outside. Ripped and dirty jerseys. People could tackle and were allowed to. Tape. Mud. Hockey-player teeth. Grass.
That sort of thing.
Long (but true) story.
So when I kind of/sort of want to watch, I recall a simpler time and watch it with the Mannings on “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli” on ESPN2 while the “main” broadcast (as if!) airs on either ESPN or ABC.
As a lot of fans in Louisiana did, I spent Monday night watching defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City host New Orleans. Kept it tuned to ESPN2. Football is fun when the Manning brothers and their guests are in the house and on the couch. Somehow, with Peyton in a downtown Denver garage/den/TV studio, Eli somewhere in his house within the gravitational pull of New York or New Jersey, and with their guest from wherever they might be, it all works out.
All-Star Lineup Monday: Peyton’s old nemesis Bill Belichick in the first half, third quarter with actor and KC super fan Paul Rudd, and the best for last: the ManningCast debut of the father of the Super Bowl quarterbacks and TV hosts sons, Archie Manning, for the fourth quarter.
Best way to watch a game.
Kansas City remained perfect at 5-0 and covered the 5.5 spread easily, beating the Saints, now 2-3, 26-13. Not a compelling game, but with the Mannings and their guests, beautiful.
Teams practice of course, but the purest beauty comes when players improvise, which they must do more than you might think. Same with the ManningCast, an offspring of Peyton’s Omaha Productions company: some of the show is planned —film clips and questions, a bonafide “bit” now and then, like Eli throwing football into a picture of his big brother’s head taped to a net — but the best parts are improvised, when the guys or the guests are flushed from the pocket.
That happens on the ManningCast about as often as the ball is snapped.
The Chiefs led 16-7 at half, the Saints hanging in there when it looked early as if the game might get away from them. A start-and-stop second half. Who cares? The babble and brotherhood carried the day.
At various times, the trio of The Brothers Manning and Belichick talked about a safety blitz that helped the Chiefs beat the Chargers in September—although the safety wasn’t even supposed to blitz. But it worked. And about how that’s often the case in the NFL, and about how those “busts” often turn into planned plays.
After that game, Peyton told Eli he’d guessed that the blitz was a bust. Eli said it wasn’t, called Chiefs stud defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuola and asked him, Spag said it WAS a bust, “and you owe me $20,” Peyton reminded Eli as he drew the blitz on the telestrator. All while the game continued.
Belichick, who coached New England to six Super Bowl wins, told a story (the stories are the thing!) about when he was an assistant with the New York Giants and how Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor came off the field after a sack when he wasn’t supposed to blitz but did, and his coach Bill Parcells said “We don’t have that blitz in our playbook” and Taylor smiled and said “Maybe we oughta put it in.”
They talked about Andy Reid’s call sheet, the big laminated card that looks like a Waffle House menu he carries on the sidelines. They talked about how the card is divided, showed an enlarged picture of it on Peyton’s giant TV telestrator, explained how it’s divided into plays to get certain players the ball or defenses to run on certain downs or distances. Or how Reid might order the No. 2, extra bacon.
They talked about the Saints good-looking new black helmets, about Belichick’s “On to Cincinnati” quote after suffering a shellacking in 2014 (the Patriots went on to win the Super Bowl that season), about how stiff-hipped defensive backs get put at safety and the hip-swivelers play corner.
Just stuff. But lots of stuff. Good stuff.
Rudd was People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2021, and Eli asked him if he’d know beforehand if he’d been chosen or “will I just find out when everybody else does,” and of course there was a mock cover of People with a picture of Eli as the newest “Sexiest Man” looking half asleep in his jersey, and then the Saints nose guard intercepted a dropped pass in the end zone and ran it back to midfield, the ultimate indignity, to spoil a Chiefs score, and the quarter ended and Paul went from being The Sexiest Man in America to The Most Distressed Man in America.
“Thanks for joining us Paul,” Peyton said going to commercial. “I’m sure you’ll look back on this as one of the great decisions of your life to be on this show and create some negative plays for your Chiefs.”
And then the fourth quarter and dear ol’ dad, glory hallelujah, Archie, who assured the boys that their mom had said it was OK for him to be on, that she’d “signed off on it.”
They asked him about the highlights of his time with the Saints and Archie said that while those weren’t many, it was interesting that “during my 11 seasons I got to play for the Saints, I had a good relationship with all seven of my head coaches during that time.”
Ahem …
But of course he loved “the journey” and “the friendships” and the “long career,” sincerely, even though the team didn’t win.
Archie was Archie, which is all he can ever be. They showed clips of Peyton “dancing” in his school play, video that hinted at his future “lack of mobility,” his dad and brother noticed. Videos of Archie and a 12-step drop back in the day, Archie scrambling, Archie passing underhanded and sidearm, Archie stories of facing the Chiefs in old Tulane Stadium and facing the Chiefs in brand new Arrowhead.
The game in Tulane Stadium was Archie’s rookie year, in preseason, and he’s scrambling all over the place and the Chiefs’ feared linebacker, Willie Lanier, told him near the end of the first half on that hot night in New Orleans, “If you run one more time,” he said, after calmly putting his hands on Manning’s chest, “I’m gonna break your neck.”
“You kind of remember those type things,” Archie said.
The game in new Arrowhead was also in preseason. “I don’t remember much about preseason games — we played six back then — but I do remember in that game I had three tackles in the first half.
“Kind of tells you,” he said, “what kind of night that was.”
Archie said he and Joe Theisman were two of the final single-bar facemask guys “until (Minnesota Hall of Fame defensive end) Alan Page planted my nose right over here by my ear; after that, I decided I needed to get a little more protection there.”
Archie had to end a couple of verbal fights by telling each of his two youngest sons to go to their rooms, which Eli said they couldn’t do, being in the middle of a TV show and all. And dad being in a different time zone.
And Peyton asked his dad if they thought something was wrong with Eli when he was born, since he weighted “only” 10 pounds and both Peyton and oldest brother Cooper each weighed 12.
“I think we kept him in the hospital a few extra days,” Archie said, playing along, then added, “The word was around the hospital that the doctor said they weighed him after he was circumcised.”
Big smiles, some head shaking and laughs, and then Eli: “Dad, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”
The Saints, the team these three grew up with, didn’t make much noise in the quarter, so it left plenty of time for Archie to talk about some of the best players of his era.
Defensive linemen: Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen.
Edge rushers: Deacon Jones and Jack Youngblood.
Most intimidating: Dick Butkus. “I didn’t play against Lawrence Taylor,” he added.
And the greatest player of his era, the best all-around? “Walter Payton. Just throw everything in there. Just a great football player.”
Payton, from Mississippi like Manning, called Archie the day after Peyton’s birth to thank him for naming his second son after him. “I tried to tell him I spelled it different, that we’d named him after his uncle,” Archie said. “But he was convinced. After a while, I just let him keep believing it.”
If you ever saw Walter Payton play, you could see why they called him Sweetness.
Like watching a game with the Mannings.
Sweetness.
What a breath of football fresh air …
The ManningCast isn’t every Monday night during the season, but it is — they are —on during each of the next four Mondays.
And you can always visit the entertaining cornucopia that is OmahaProductions.com; you must see the 10-minute ManningCast: The Musical, which you’ll probably want to watch only once — but you’ve got to see it that one time.
But especially, consider the ManningCast on Mondays. It’s entertainment. It’s a football lesson if you want it to be, but it’s also a relaxing way to watch a sometimes violent but beautiful sport, an athletic broadcast for the prince and the pauper, for the athlete and the fan, for the AFC or the NFC, for the circumcised or the uncircumcised.
It’s nuts. It’s (foot)ballsy.
It’s fun.
Sweetness.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
