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 30th and final episode is titled “The Final Destination” and it wraps up this celebration of the NFL’s 100th season by revisiting a couple of historic Super Bowls and having Peyton recap his journey in Canton, Ohio.
This episode picks up right where the last one left off. In fact, the first segment of this episode actually feels as though it was planned for the last one, which was titled “The Super Bowl” and revisited some of the most memorable big games throughout history.
The opening segment saw Peyton travel to the Rose Bowl to visit former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw. There, they discussed Super Bowl XIV, where Bradshaw’s Steelers captured their fourth championship in six years. It’s a very familiar segment as the previous episode provided several of the same and Bradshaw has appeared on the show before. Still, it’s a fun one as Bradshaw and Peyton have good chemistry and they share quite a few highlights from the game.
Next, Peyton visits with the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only NFL team to ever truly complete an undefeated season. As it turns out, a group of guys from that team gets together every year when the last undefeated team suffers their first loss of the year. Together, they celebrate one more year of being the only team to accomplish that feat.
Peyton catches up with the group of players and their legendary coach, Don Shula. They discuss their incredible season and break down a bit of the Super Bowl that capped it off. It’s a fun segment loaded with both football history and entertaining personalities.
Finally, Peyton decides to finish up his journey where the NFL began its journey – Canton, Ohio. Peyton brings his son Marshall to visit the football hall of fame and recap his 30-episode adventure around the country to celebrate the 100th season of the NFL.
We don’t necessarily get anything new here, but it’s a perfect ending to the series. As Peyton teaches his son some of the great moments in the sport’s history, we get brief glimpses at moments from the series and some of the guests he had along the way. And in true Peyton fashion, the episode ends on a joke in which Peyton makes his case for a second season (I say give it to him).
This episode, as I mentioned, was pretty much a continuation of last week’s and mostly just served as a way to wrap up the series.
As a whole, Peyton’s Places has been a fantastic series. It was incredibly informative without ever feeling to dry or lacking in entertainment. There were a few questionable moments along the way, but overall Peyton took us on a wonderful journey through 100 years of NFL history.
All 30 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.