Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli Manning provided what most football broadcasts cannot

Slate

ESPN2's alternate "ManningCast" may have cracked the code for creating exciting new sports content. "The sport’s most famous brothers proved to be the right kind of football dorks to talk to a national audience," says Alex Kirshner. "They talked in plenty of Xs-and-Os jargon, and you might’ve had a hard time following everything if you didn’t grasp the difference between zero- and two-man coverages. Even then, the Mannings tried to help you, and they helped some of the game’s finer points make fast sense in a way few broadcast analysts could emulate. They also drew on some of the cachet that comes with being senior members of football’s royal family. Combined with the Raiders and Baltimore Ravens providing a delirious mess of a game, the commentary made for a singular viewing experience as the Raiders finally got out of their own way to win in overtime...The Mannings offer a window into today’s QBs that most of us in the football media cannot. Yes, there are the schematics, which they know better than almost anyone. They can tell you with pretty good accuracy when the defense is playing zone or man-to-man coverage, and then drill down a lot deeper than that. But it’s also a matter of access. When I want to tell you a story about what Lamar Jackson was like before he hit it big, I have to call his high school coach and look at some Hudl highlights. If Peyton and Eli want to tell you a story like that, they can just talk about the time Jackson showed up at the Manning Passing Academy. That’s the family’s annual QB camp, which at this point is more or less a papal conclave for those trying to make it at football’s key position. The famously slow, non-agile Mannings talked about how they taught Jackson to juke in the open field. I chuckled." ALSO: Don't be surprised if the "ManningCast" format is copied with other sports.