Peyton Manning is one of the greatest and most famous football players of all-time. He has hosted Saturday Night Live, appeared in countless commercials and, oh yeah, won a couple of Super Bowls. Now, he’s hosting his own series on ESPN+.
Peyton’s Places follows the NFL great around the country as he explores the history of the National Football League, one piece at a time. The 13th episode of the series explores the history of kicking and explains why you can blame General Custer for the ongoing New England Patriots dynasty.
Peyton’s Places continues to uncover some of the wildest history of the game that you (or at least I) have never heard of before. This episode takes a look at some of the most unique kicking styles ever seen (after putting blame on Custer for the Pats’ dynasty and then going in a completely different direction, but I’ll get back to that later).
Peyton sits down with legendary straight away kicker Mark Moseley, who is the only kicker to ever win the league’s MVP award. We get a good look at his unique style and custom footwear, before the long-retired kicker shows that he’s still got it.
We then jump to an interview with another former kicker, Rich Karlis, who used to kick the ball barefoot. You read that right. He would wear no shoe on his kicking foot. And according to the highlights shown in the episode, he was far from the only one. Peyton, being his typical goofy self, even decides to try to kick a field goal barefoot himself. After a few attempts, he finally knocks one through.
Luckily for Peyton, he didn’t have to handle the kicking duties for much of his career. For many years, he left future hall of fame kicker Adam Vinatieri in charge of that. Peyton meets up with Vinatieri as we jump back to that whole General Custer story we started in the beginning.
That’s my only issue with this episode. We were told an old general from the 1800s was responsible for the current Patriots dynasty and then watched 20 minutes of guys who kicked funny. It was all entertaining, don’t get me wrong, it just wasn’t really connected.
Then Peyton makes a very loose connection of, those guys were kickers, Vinatieri is a kicker, he helped launch the Patriots dynasty and his great, great grandfather had a connection with Custer. Like I said, very loose connection. In the end though it is a really cool story. I won’t spoil it so you can hear it from Peyton and Vinatieri themselves.
This is yet another very entertaining and very informative episode of Peyton’s Places, loaded with a bunch of football history and even some plain old American history. It’s a bit of a stretch going from kickers to Custer but it still takes a pretty cool look at the game so many of us love.
The first 13 episodes of Peyton’s Places are available now on ESPN+. Fans can subscribe to ESPN+ for just $4.99 a month (or $49.99 per year) and can cancel at any time.