Peyton, Eli Manning's 'Monday Night Football' show taking break

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After a three-week introduction, including a stretch where viewership increased by 138% during the opening pair of games, the alternate ESPN “Monday Night Football” MegaCast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning will take a three-week hiatus and return for Week 7, they announced during their Sept. 27 Cowboys-Eagles broadcast.

That week, the Seattle Seahawks will host the New Orleans Saints at Lumen Field on Oct. 25, the fourth of 10 games that the Manning brothers will work during the 2021 season. They will also cover the Giants-Chiefs game in Week 8. Their deal, announced by ESPN in July, includes 10 games for each of the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons. 

They averaged 800,000 viewers during the Week 1 broadcast of the Las Vegas Raiders and Baltimore Ravens, and the Manning brothers were told at halftime to focus more on football. Those viewership numbers nearly doubled seven days later during the Detroit Lions’ game against the Green Bay Packers, when they logged 1.9 million.

In-game guests on the MegaCast have included Charles Barkley, Russell Wilson, Rob Gronkowski, Nick Saban and LeBron James, while the Manning brothers have also made headlines for Peyton accusing the New England Patriots of bugging the visitors’ locker room and for Eli flipping off the camera with both hands.

Through the first two weeks, the NFL’s viewership numbers were the highest they’d been — at 17.2 million — since 2016 and up 14% over the opening pair of games from last year, according to league numbers and Nielsen. 

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