A rumor that users circulated online in April 2025 told the story of five-time NFL Most Valuable Player Peyton Manning calming a crying baby on a long flight and later slipping the child's father a kind note of encouragement.
For example, on April 23, a user managing the Forbidden Stories Facebook page posted (archived) the story, receiving over 41,000 reactions. The post showed pictures of Manning, who retired from the NFL in 2016, holding a baby wearing a jersey for the Indianapolis Colts — one of the teams for which Manning played. The story began, "A baby was crying nonstop on a plane. Everyone was frustrated — until Peyton Manning got up and did something no one expected."
(Forbidden Stories/Facebook)
At least dozens of other Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Threads, and X users shared the same story, with several Facebook posts receiving tens of thousands of engagements. Some of those posts incorporated a meme reading, "Peyton Manning comforted a crying baby on a flight, offering kindness and encouragement to a struggling dad, calming the entire cabin."
(This Will Blow Your Socks Off/Facebook)
The story takes place on a flight, with no mention of the airline's name, from Denver to Atlanta. Manning approaches a father holding a crying baby and asks, referencing his athletic abilities, "Mind if I hold her for a bit? Sometimes I've got a pretty good spiral." Within minutes, Manning calms the child. He then hands the father a note reading, "You're doing better than you think. Don't measure your fatherhood by the noise. Measure it by the love." The story ends with the words, "That dad still keeps the napkin in his wallet. Because one man chose compassion over convenience. And sometimes… that's all it takes to change everything."
While it's possible Manning — or anyone, for that matter — has, in the past, offered to help a parent on an airplane calm a crying baby, this specific story — and a Facebook user who originated the tale — displayed several glaring signs of inauthenticity. In other words, the rumor about Manning and the crying baby was false.
Snopes reached out to a spokesperson for Manning's official website, peytonmanning.com, as well as two WME agents listed on IMDb Pro as his representatives, but we had not received replies by the time of publication.
Debunking the Manning/crying baby rumor
Snopes established multiple data points to conclude with a false fact-check rating. The story of Manning and the crying baby contained a flight route, direct quotes and a transcript from a private note, yet no news media outlets reported on the matter, per searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. Had the story transpired as authored, wouldn't some passengers have shared their firsthand accounts of Manning's kindness on Facebook or elsewhere? Searches for such firsthand information turned up no results.
Also, the pictures included with the posts showing Manning holding a baby had nothing to do with a flight. According to information published by Vigilant Sports (archived), the photos showed the former NFL quarterback with his son, Marshall, inside the Colts locker room in 2011.
Further, searches of Facebook indicated the made-up story originated in an April 17 post on the Magic Clement Facebook profile. One or more users managing the profile posted similar fabricated stories of Manning comforting people, with some of the tales also featuring people crying and Manning handing them notes of encouragement. For example, on April 23 and 24 alone, the Magic Clement profile showed posts telling tales of Manning comforting a crying janitor, a bullied boy, a crying boy at a cemetery, a woman crying outside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and many others.
Some of these posts featured AI-generated pictures of Manning with the other person, including the post about the boy crying at a cemetery. Signs of generative-AI in the photo included a nameless, misspelled headstone reading "Husbad and Father," as well as incorrect numbers of stars and stripes on an American flag.
(Magic Clement/Facebook)
These stories all very much resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as "stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental."
For further reading, past fact checks examining other tales of glurge told of tech billionaire Elon Musk reuniting a lost 5-year-old girl with her mother and buying the family a house, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump once helping a homeless veteran in New York City find housing and a job and later holding a White House ceremony in his honor.