King's Hawaiian and Eli Manning Push the NFL to Add a New Stat

King's Hawaiian wants the NFL to start counting something it has never bothered to track: the quarterback slide.

The Hawaiian bread brand is teaming up with two-time Super Bowl champion Eli Manning in a brand partnership that pushes football to recognize the slide as an official statistic.

Passing yards, rushing yards, and sacks all get tracked, but the move quarterbacks use to protect themselves and end a play has no line on the stat sheet.

The chain and Manning are calling that an oversight worth fixing through "The Best Slider in Football."

It's a campaign that puts the brand's best-known food next to the move Manning built part of his career on.

The effort centers on a petition at BestSliderInFootball.com asking football to officially track quarterback slides.

Fans who sign and submit proof of their signature can win free King's Hawaiian slider buns for life.

"Sliders are a crucial part of game day, both on and off the field," said Raouf Moussa, CMO at King's Hawaiian.

"Therefore, we want to recognize their importance by making them an official stat. We knew we had to team up with one of the most iconic quarterbacks to help right this wrong."

Manning, who created a reputation for knowing exactly when to throw, run, or get down, is just as invested in the cause.

"The best way to settle a debate about the best slider in football is to look at the stats," he said.

When King's Hawaiian came up with their idea to track quarterback slides, Manning was ecstatic. 

"I couldn't wait to work with them to bring this to football and slider fans everywhere," he added.

Making the Slide Official

Created with creative agency Erich & Kallman, the campaign also comes with a new King's Hawaiian commercial spot starring Manning.

It plays out like an ad shoot within the ad, where the quarterback makes his case for the title of Best Slider in Football.

"You guys like sliders? Check this out," Manning tells some football fans, sliding into frame with a perfect pose each time to claim the title.

Meanwhile, King's Hawaiian holds its ground on the title's off-field version.

Overall, the spot runs on the logic that stats settle debates, except this time it plays out as a back-and-forth instead of a list of numbers.

Whether or not the NFL ever adds the stat to determine the best slider, the ad already treats the argument as settled.

King's Hawaiian owns off-field sliders, while Manning owns on-field ones.

Why Fans Already Want the Numbers

Football fans want more categories to obsess over, and that's a proven fact.

An estimated 57 million people across the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in the past year, according to the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association's 2025 Angus Reid Group survey.

Meanwhile, ESPN's fantasy football game reached 14 million players in 2025, a record for the fourth consecutive year, per the network. 

Fans have long built entire leagues around box scores, so a petition for one new stat asks very little of them.

King's Hawaiian is pointing that habit at a stadium debate, using celebrity marketing to give the ask a face fans trust.

Three lessons stand out for marketers building campaigns around fan debates:

• Give fans a stake in the outcome: the slider buns for life prize turns the petition into a personal incentive.
• Align with what the athlete is known for: Manning's slide history makes him credible on this specific ask.
• Make the campaign do double duty: the spot, the petition, and the giveaway all point to one site, making the single action cover the whole ask.

All in all, the debate already existed among players, coaches, and fans.

King's Hawaiian just gave it somewhere to go.

If the NFL actually adds this stat, King's Hawaiian gets its name attached to a word that's bound to be on every broadcast, every box score, and every stat sheet: slide.

We think that's the real prize here, not the petition traffic nor the buns-for-life giveaway.

Stats get said out loud by announcers and printed in recaps for as long as the sport exists, with no media buy required once they're in the system.

We think King's Hawaiian is playing a longer game than the ad admits by trying to make "slider" mean something else in football, permanently, every time a quarterback goes down.

Most campaigns rent attention for a season, but this one is angling for a word.

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