Peyton Manning is basically the Serena Williams of male athletes, slowly but surely transitioning from professional football to other entertainment ventures through appearing in commercials with Justin Timberlake and hosting Saturday Night Live a few years back. Now, thanks to a sadly fake trailer as an advertising campaign from DirecTV, he and his brother Eli are Football Cops.
The trailer takes itself exactly as seriously as the title implies: It's as deliberately on-the-nose as Hot Tub Time Machine or Cowboys Vs. Aliens, complete with the brothers rocking footballs in holsters instead of guns—because their arms are the real cannons (waka-waka).
Appearing as mustachioed Officers Mike Tahoe and C.J. Hunter respectively, Peyton and Eli actually manage to pull off some nice comedic performances, poking fun at themselves and having a great time while the NFL goes through a lockout. All the typical cop-show cliches get trotted out here, but infused with football jargon, like an interrogation scene where the Mannings respond to a criminal saying a bruise on his face constitutes "unnecessary roughness" with the one-two punch of "I didn't hear a whistle," "And I don't see a flag!" Even their father, Archie Manning, gets in on the fun as the chief who doesn't like the officers' tactics.
Though DirecTV doesn't tip its hand, most sources have debunked the idea that there is an actual show coming in the fall, but if this is indeed an advertising campaign, there are probably some more videos coming up that will make it to the airwaves as shorter commercials.