When former quarterback Eli Manning appeared on NFL Hall of Famer and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan’s new podcast ‘Hustle Like You’re Broke’, he spoke about how he and his brother, Peyton Manning, first came up with what kind of show they wanted ManningCast to be. He recalled how the skit they planned for their first ManningCast episode turned into a disaster, and that somehow worked in their favor.

“I just remember the very first episode we had and Peyton, we’re kind of a little nervous like we’re doing this new show, no one knows what it is and he was like I don’t think we have enough to talk about like what are we going to talk about?” Eli Manning recalled on the November 4 episode of ‘Hustle Like You’re Broke’. “I’m like, ‘Well there’s a game on, like, you know plays will happen. We’ll analyze plays, like, you know, we don’t have to have that much prepared to talk about or skits. He’s like, ‘No we need a skit.’”

Manning described how Peyton pitched a skit where Eli would pretend to be the offensive coordinator while Peyton would put on a quarterback’s helmet, and the brothers would show the procedure of how the OC coached the quarterback and the team to run a specific play. But the helmet they had on hand did not fit on Peyton Manning‘s head and knocked his earpiece loose.

The debacle coincided with a big 80-yard play happening in the game, prompting Eli to start calling the play. Peyton, unaware of what was going on without his earphones, also started calling the play happening on the screen. Both brothers admitted it was a chaotic mess during their debrief with ESPN2 the next day. But it also made them unafraid to take risks and try new things.

“It’s a total disaster. Like a total, total disaster. Does not work at all. So the next day we had a debrief kind of like, ‘All right, let’s talk about what went well, what didn’t do well.’ I was like, ‘Hey, we should do that, coach the quarterback thing again. That went really well with being the smart Alec, you know, brother,’” Eli remembered saying sarcastically.

“And they’re [ESPN2] like, ‘Yeah, that didn’t go great.’ But it was like the number one thing on social media and a huge hit for the fans to watch that. I was like, ‘Oh, so we need more bad ideas.’ I could come up with terrible ideas and just so. But I think that also helped us, like, we don’t have to be scared to mess up.”

Eli and Peyton Manning’s alternative NFL broadcast show, ManningCast, has been a hit with fans since its debut in 2021. The show routinely garnered over a million views during its first few seasons, reaching a whopping 1.96 million viewers on November 1, 2021, during the New York Giants and the Kansas City Chiefs game. 

However, with the launch of the MNF Playbook with Next Gen Stats, ManningCast’s viewership has dropped to about half of its original count. But Eli Manning insists on preserving the original structure and authenticity of the show they created.

He explained that he didn’t want the show to be a traditional commentary, where they break down every play. They wanted to have the freedom to focus on plays they found impressive, along with bantering with guests about their love for football.

Eli Manning also mentioned that he found it fascinating when ManningCast guests dropped their own football trivia, which could be focused on a specific team they loved or from a previous era when the Manning brothers themselves were just teenagers.

Although their declining viewership suggests that many fans were gravitating back to shows featuring traditional stat-based broadcast and commentary, ManningCast continues to cater to the niche fanbase it has developed over the years. However, the show’s fate is still unclear, since a further decline in views could make the project unsustainable in the long run.