The breakout star of the 2021 NFL season is ESPN’s Manningcast where brothers Peyton and Eli Manning provide an alternate broadcast of the Monday Night Football game.
But the week three game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles produced a moment that went viral on social media.
And that’s because ESPN caught Eli Manning making one obscene gesture that no one could believe.
Each week the Manning brothers host one surprise guest per quarter as part of the innovative broadcast that is the runaway hit of the football season.
In the fourth quarter of Monday night’s Eagles-Cowboys contest, the Manning brothers interviewed former Eagles defensive lineman Chris Long.
The Cowboys were laying a beating on the Eagles so the focus of the conversation drifted away from the game and focused more on the three former Super Bowl champions shooting the breeze and telling stories.
Since the game involved the Eagles, the topic of the Eagles’ notoriously hostile fan base came up.
Long joked about how the Eagles crowd once famously booed Santa Claus, and Eli Manning – who played in Philly every year for 15 years with the New York Giants – joked about how nine-year-olds would flip him double middle fingers.
At that point Manning actually put up both middle fingers thinking ESPN could blur out the gesture.
Since it was live television, they obviously could not.
Eli with the double bird 😂pic.twitter.com/x2S6F5Y16a
— The Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) September 28, 2021
The Manningcast is one of the great innovations for sports broadcasting.
Peyton and Eli Manning have a certain cornball charisma that connects with fans and they watch the games as two brothers who are huge fans – with extremely educated opinions – that drop the corporate coach speak that fans are accustomed to on normal gamecasts.
Sports with Balls will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
