Seth Meyers recalls “SNL” host Peyton Manning trying to slip a Tom Brady joke into his monologue

Meyers remembered the joke the Super Bowl winner tried to sneak in as "a friendly, soft burn."

When the Peyton Manning–Tom Brady rivalry was at its peak in the 2000s, the blows traded between the two reached all the way to 30 Rock.

Seth Meyers recently recalled the time when Manning approached him about adding a last-minute Tom Brady joke to his Saturday Night Live monologue. Manning had just led his team, the Indianapolis Colts, to victory over the Chicago Bears at Super Bowl XLI in 2007. Feeling a bit boastful, he thought he might slip a little shade into his set — but Meyers wasn't so sure.

"So, Jenna the stage manager was like, 'Peyton wants to talk to you backstage before the monologue,'" he recalled on the The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. "I went backstage and Peyton had a suggestion, he had a joke he wanted to add at the last minute about Tom Brady."

"Ooh, spicy," his co-hosts concurred. Meyers continued: "He was like, 'Do you think I should do this? I was like, 'Oh, I don't know.' It was really, I was like, 'I don't process ideas this fast!'"

Meyers revealed that Manning didn't end up going through with the joke, but his cohosts pressed him to reveal what it would have been. "It was a soft burn that would have been the 200th-hottest burn at the Brady roast. Whatever it was, my memory is that it seems very quaint now."

Ensuring he didn't reignite the rivalry close to 10 years since it's informally been put to bed, Meyers clarified: "It was a friendly, soft burn, it should be noted."

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The rivalry between the two legendary quarterbacks has always been affable. But if it does rekindle, it certainly won't be on Meyers' account, but on account of Netflix's The Roast of Tom Brady that he mentioned.

It's always a bit odd when a non-comedian is chosen as the subject of a celebrity roast. But odd tipped rapidly into wild at the Brady roast, which Manning attended. Kim Kardashian was booed so loud she needed Kevin Hart to silence the crowd before she could speak, Will Ferrell showed up as Ron Burgundy, Brady endured a volley of painful jokes related to his divorce from Gisele Bündchen, and Brady was criticized for his own jokes at Bündchen's expense.

Related: Nikki Glaser roasts Ben Affleck for bombing at The Roast of Tom Brady: 'He didn't prepare'

Brady did get in one white-hot line at Manning's expense while he took the podium to respond to his roasters: "Sometimes you live in Denver, sometimes you live in Louisiana, but you'll always live in my shadow."

Funny enough, revisiting the Manning monologue from 2007 calls to mind that he did actually make a Brady-related joke after all. But, ever the gracious Southerner, the joke was at his own expense, not his rival's.

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"I was recently visiting a veteran's hospital in Boston and I sat with Joe O'Malley, 85 years old," he began. "He said to me, 'Peyton, what do Tom Brady and the circus have in common?' I said, 'What's that Joe?' He said, 'They have two more rings than you do.'"

The crowd's knee-jerk laughter quickly fizzled into a shocked "ooooh."

"You know, I said thanks," Manning quickly recovered. "Because of that comment, I'm gonna go back and work hard to make sure to kick y'all's ass again next year."

Manning's SNL monologue doesn't stand out as one of the best an athlete-host has ever given, but the infamous "United Way" sketch he starred in on that episode sure has stood the test of time.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.