Mannelly attended Marist School in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was a good student and a letterman in football and basketball. In football, he was invited to the Georgia-Florida All-Star game after his senior season. Mannelly graduated from Marist School in 1993.
He played college football at Duke and was selected by the Chicago Bears in the sixth round of the 1998 NFL Draft. Mannelly played with the Bears for 16 years before retiring in 2014. He is now a midday sports talk host in Chicago on 670 The Score.
He missed a majority of senior year due to a mysterious hip injury.
In Mannelly"s final college game he went up against Mel Tucker. 15 years later Tucker would join Mannelly at the Chicago Bears and became the Bears defensive coordinator.
The Bears drafted Mannelly in the sixth round of the 1998 NFL Draft. On September 27, 2010, Mannelly broke Steve McMichael"s Chicago Bears record for most games played as a Bear, with 192.
In 2006, kicker Robbie Gould claimed that Mannelly played a pivotal part of his productive season, and praised him in his Pro Bowl acceptance speech.
Additionally, many of Mannelly"s teammates considered him one of the NFL"s unsung heroes. In a 2011 game against the San Diego Chargers, Mannelly ruptured his Anterior Cruciate Ligament, and was placed on injured reserve. In 2012, Mannelly broke the record for most seasons with the Bears with 15.
On December 24, 2012, Mannelly signed a one-year deal with the Bears.
Mannelly retired on June 20, 2014 after a 16-year career. Mannelly ended his career with 81 special teams tackles, the third most by a Bear since 1995, and the longest tenured player in team history.
On September 2, 2014, Mannelly debuted with Chicago sports talk radio station 670 The Score as a co-host to Matt Spiegel.
