ESPN Abruptly Cut To Commercial During David Letterman’s Story About Roger Goodell On The Manningcast

The ESPN2 Manningcast with Peyton and Eli has been a delight throughout the NFL season, as the two brothers host an almost weekly side broadcast of Monday Night Football. Part of the charm of the Manningcast is how casual it is — although, at times, it could use to be more buttoned up with regards to talking over guests — balancing their intense football analysis with guests bringing funny stories to the broadcast.

During the Patriots-Bills wind-wrecked disaster of a game in Buffalo, the Mannings had David Letterman join them, as the Indiana native is a big fan of Peyton’s from his time with the Colts and spent enough time in New York to be very familiar with Eli as well. Letterman provided the expected dry humor to the proceedings, including poking some fun at Bill Belichick as he arrived on the broadcast, as the Patriots coach was on camera wiping snot on his hoodie to the delight of Dave.

However, at the end of his visit in the second quarter he really got going, as he got to talking about being there to speak at Peyton’s statue ceremony in Indianapolis and a funny interaction with Roger Goodell. He was just getting into how much he enjoyed the commish getting booed mercilessly by Colts fans, which Goodell told him would happen, when ESPN abruptly went to commercial mid-story.

Now, guests getting cut off by a hard commercial out is nothing new to the Manningcast, but this one was particularly strange because the game was still rolling on the splitscreen as the other half cut to an ad. Given this is a broadcast that’s refused to hit the dump button on people cursing and Eli throwing up the double birds on camera, it’s funny to think the line gets drawn at possibly making fun of Roger Goodell.