Jermaine Wiggins: The ‘ManningCast’ Should ‘At Least Have the Hosts in the Same Room’

Throughout the Boston Bruins season, NESN has been airing the Unobstructed Views broadcast alongside select regular-season games. The alternate presentation features three former Bruins players in Andrew Raycroft, Patrice Bergeron and Tuukka Rask viewing the game together in the studio and providing their reactions in real time. The trio was on the air on Thursday night as the Bruins faced the Carolina Hurricanes, a regular-season matchup that ended in a 3-2 loss after Seth Jarvis scored a game-winning goal with 18.6 seconds remaining. Jermaine Wiggins was watching the contest, along with the Boston Celtics game against the Philadelphia 76ers, and revealed that he was tuned into the alternate broadcast.

During the Friday morning edition of The Greg Hill Show on WEEI, Wiggins averred that he needed to give the team at Unobstructed Views credit, affirming that they were skilled in the craft. Wiggins recalled that the show welcomed former NHL center and current broadcast analyst Brian Boyle to the show and insinuated the strong chemistry between the cast. From there, he proceeded to talk about the program in relation to the Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli presentation, which recently averaged 1 million viewers per game in its third season.

“It is really an interesting thing to watch, and I enjoy the ManningCast because I used to love to listen to Bill [Belichick] and his insight on the game, and watching those type of broadcasts where you can actually hear players breaking down certain things as they happen in the game, in my opinion, I like better than just the standard play-by-play and color commentary guy,” Wiggins said.

“But they’re all in the same room, and I wish that the Mannings would take a page out of that book and at least have the hosts in the same room – the two brothers – and then you could always Zoom in whoever the special guest is if you can’t be in a location where the guest can kind of come.”

Courtney Cox, the co-host of the morning program, added that Unobstructed Views utilizes a two-shot with Rask and Bergeron situated on a couch while Raycroft is alone in another box. Yet the former Bruins are all in the same room, and she conveyed that it just feels like three friends who are all watching the game. Wiggins shared that they were stunned surrounding the goal in the waning seconds of the third period, which took place less than a minute after the Hurricanes lost a potential game-winning tally due to an offsides call.

“If you haven’t got a chance to do it, I think the next game that they’re going to be doing – they talked about afterwards – is St. Patty’s Day,” Wiggins concluded, “so give it a little check, a follow and watch, and like I said, hopefully we can send it to the Mannings so they can learn how to do the ManningCast better this season.”

NESN aired the latest edition of the broadcast on the same day as reported editorial cuts said to be part of a series of layoffs at the company. A spokesperson for the company told Chad Finn of The Boston Globe that the layoffs encompassed “part of an overall assessment and strategic pivot to a different model.”

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