Yes, The Rock Did Have A T-Rex Skull Behind Him On The Manningcast, And Its Name Is Stan (And Maybe Cost $31.8 Million)

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson does well for himself as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and a person with plenty of business interests, and when you make as much money as The Rock does, you have to find weird stuff to spend it on, because part of being exceptionally wealthy is being able to buy stuff you absolutely do not need but decide you really want.

On Monday night, The Rock joined Peyton and Eli Manning for the second quarter of the Rams first half blowout of the Cardinals in the Wild Card round, in which he plugged his movies and tequila brand — even going for a full on pull from the bottle after a horrific Kyler Murray pick-six. But many viewers were more focused on what was behind Johnson in the wide shot of his interview, as there was a giant T-Rex head just on the ground by a window.

Eli Manning, thankfully, was also fascinated by this and had to ask The Rock about it, to which Dwayne regaled them with a tale of it being the most complete T-Rex skull in existence and being named Stan.

Somehow, this story only gets wilder from here, because a quick Google search of this gets us to a story from CNN in which Stan — which is, as Johnson said, the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever unearthed — sold for $31.8 million at auction in 2020 to an undisclosed buyer. If that is really the head, that means The Rock was the one who spent nearly $32 million on a whole T-Rex and it raises so, so many questions that I must list them out below.

Where is the rest of the dinosaur, Dwayne?
Why is the head just sitting in what appears to be a guest room/office by a window if it costs this much money?
Did you really spend $32 million on a dinosaur skeleton just to put it in your house?
If you didn’t, did you read this story about Stan the T-Rex and then lie and say you own it on national television during an NFL Playoff game?
How many other dinosaur fossils do you own?
Do you just have a room full of dinosaur fossils that you decided to do an ESPN2 interview from?
Do you have an entire house dedicated to dinosaur fossils, because if you have $32 million to spend on fossils, we must ask this question?
Who will greenlight my screenplay about The Rock refusing to go to the police and instead choosing to personally track down a team of thieves after they heist his $32 million dinosaur?

Anyways, I hope someone takes the time to ask The Rock these pressing questions the next time he goes on a movie promo tour, because this might be the most interesting story in all of Hollywood.

UPDATE: Apparently you can buy a replica Stan head for $11,500 from the Black Hills Institute, which is possibly what The Rock did. However, I must stress that The Rock absolutely has enough money to buy a $32 million dinosaur skeleton and we cannot rule that out, because he certainly made it seem like this was the real thing and not a replica.