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Hulu's latest sports comedy, Chad Powers, premiered on September 30, 2025, and has quickly grabbed viewers' attention. In the sports comedy series, Glen Powell portrays a character named Russ Holliday, an egoistic quarterback, who comes back to join as a walk-on player in a college football team after a decade, and tries to resolve his past mistakes.
The show is created by Michael Waldron and Glen Powell, who took the inspiration from an ESPN docuseries called Eli's Places. In the docuseries, New York Giants' popular quarterback, Eli Manning, disguised himself as a man called Chad Powers and tried out as a walk-on quarterback for Penn State's football team.
Powell's show borrowed the same concept and used Eli's viral character for the sports comedy series.
More on this in our story.
Powell's Chad Powers is inspired by Eli Manning's viral character
In the Hulu series, Powell plays Russ Holliday, who is described as an arrogant football quarterback of his college team. However, his rude personality results in his downfall after a championship match. After a decade, he disguises himself with fake hair and prosthetics and participates in a try-out as a walk-in quarterback for a college football team.
The whole concept of the Hulu series was taken from a sketch from Season 2 of ESPN's docuseries, Eli's Places. In the episode, like Powell, Eli had changed his whole appearance, with fake hair and prosthetics. His character, Chad Powers, then went into a tryout for walk-in quarterback for Penn State's football team.
In the episode, he stunned the coaches of the college with his skills, but was later found to be ineligible to be a part of the team. He later revealed his real identity, which shocked the whole college.
The Hulu series follows the concept of Eli's show to create the character. However, the story later differs from the docuseries, as Powell's character gets selected in the tryout for the college football team. He later tries to use this second opportunity to play football and make up for all the mistakes that he had made years ago.
Chad Powers: Eli Manning's involvement in the Hulu series
The Hulu comedy series has the Manning brothers, Eli and Peyton, attached to it as executive producers. While talking to Good Morning America, Powell shared that the brothers were thoroughly involved in creating the show. He stated:
"One of the coolest things about the Manning boys is that they are extremely involved."
He further added that while they aimed to make a funny show, they wanted to show real football as well. Therefore, Eli and Peyton's involvement in the series helped in the creation of the show a lot. He said:
"We wanted this thing to be funny and heartfelt but to have the football be legit. You know what a real quarterback looks like and when it doesn’t, so the fact that I have these guys as my coach, it's a nice little lifesaver."
Other than being the EP of the show, Eli Manning will also be appearing in the sports comedy series as a coach for a college football team.
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Hulu's Chad Powers includes an ensemble cast of Perry Mattfeld, Wynn Everett, Steve Zahn, Quentin Plair, and Frankie Rodriguez, among others.
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