Peyton and Eli Manning promoted the schedule for this season of their ManningCast Monday Night Football Omaha Productions/NFL Films/ESPN alternate broadcast with a 10-minute video of “ManningCast: The Musical” in September. And that star-studded video featured appearances from everyone from Roger Goodell to Bob Iger to Snoop Dogg, Andy Reid, Baker Mayfield, Robert Downey Jr., and more.
Apparently, that musical made an impression on Eli. He decided to recap this season’s guests in musical style in a video leading into their Wild Card broadcast of Vikings-Rams on ESPN2 Monday.
Here’s that video, provided as a premiere for AA, with Eli singing his way through the ManningCast’s 2024 season guest lineup:
Here’s the original ManningCast: The Musical for reference:
One night only… ManningCast: The Musical 🍿 pic.twitter.com/M6Zjm0BeAv
— Omaha Productions (@OmahaProd) September 3, 2024
Around the September release of that video (which featured 40 different celebrities and media personalities, with another 10 appearing in extra promotional content, and which fit into a surprisingly long list of sports broadcasting/musical crossovers), the Mannings spoke to ESPN’s Kalan Hooks about how it came together. There, Eli said his preparation for the musical wasn’t with professional help, noting “I sing in the car sometimes and I’m pretty sure I sound great. No lessons needed.” And he added that they were unlikely to really embrace a musical career, saying “Hey, if the people at the Tony Awards want to help us achieve our goal by giving us a Tony, we’ll consider taking the show on the road. But outside of that, it’s ManningCast season.” But the musical idea clearly did stick around for him a bit, even if Peyton has “moved on.”
Eli’s song here fits into a tradition of fun season-ending wrapups from the ManningCast, with last year’s seeing Eli bring back guests to roast Peyton. This time around, Eli runs through the wide variety of guests their broadcast had this season, and it is impressive to look back at that list of 25 guests. They had a large amount of current football broadcasters, with many of those from other networks. That list included Scott Hanson (who provided game updates as part of a unique doubleheader), Maria Taylor, JJ Watt, Rex Ryan, Matt Ryan, Bill Cowher, and Cris Collinsworth (who discussed his old “not that athletic” commentary on Eli, then delivered a mic-dropping perfect prediction of Ja’Marr Chase’s game-winning touchdown).
Beyond the current football broadcasters, the Mannings also had prominent former players as guests this season. Those included Ed Reed, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Vrabel (also known for his coaching work), and their dad, Archie Manning. And they had two notable current players, Colts’ QB Joe Flacco and Chiefs’ DT Chris Jones.
The Mannings dove into the entertainment world a lot as well this season. There, they featured Adam Sandler (who celebrated his birthday on the show, and got a pair of shorts with Peyton and Eli’s faces), Miles Teller (who once played Peyton on a Saturday Night Live ManningCast parody), Paul Rudd (who cracked up at a fake People cover replacing him with Eli for “Sexiest Man Alive”), Will Arnett, LL Cool J, Jason Sudeikis (who became the first guest to return later in the same show, coming back when Chiefs-Bucs went to overtime), Jim Gaffigan, Luke and Owen Wilson, and John Legend (live from his green room before a show in Portland, with that appearance also featuring Eli showing off his dancing skills with the Ickey Shuffle and earning a promise that he could be a backup dancer for Legend).
This marks the fourth season of the ManningCast, and, as per our reader-voted announcer rankings, there are a lot of people who love it. This year was the first time we included altcasts in those ratings, and the Mannings placed ninth out of the 25 broadcasting teams considered, with a 2.713 numerical average, 619 A grades, and 629 B grades.
The ManningCast has also received a lot of recognition beyond that. That includes That also includes a Sports Emmy win in each year of the broadcast, for Outstanding Live Series in 2022 and 2024 and for Peyton as Outstanding Personality/Sports Event Analyst in 2023. We’ll see how they do wrapping up this season with that playoff broadcast, and if another Emmy might be in the cards for them. (A Tony, however, does appear like a longer shot.)
