Joe Thomas ‘had a little bit of John Madden in him’ during Monday Night Football auditions

There is a whole new crew that will be covering Monday Night Football this year, led by Joe Tessitore as the play-by-play man. It was recently announced that former Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten was selected to be the color commentator, with Booger McFarland picked as the field analyst.

Richard Deitsch of The Athletic reports that over a six-week period between March and April, Tessitore auditioned 12 candidates to be his color commentator. Witten obviously landed the job, but one of the candidates was retired Browns left tackle Joe Thomas. Deitsch relayed what Tessitore had to say about Thomas’ audition:

“[Thomas] is such a great dude, but I will acknowledge and Joe will acknowledge, he’s very green. But if I was to tell you who had the two funniest moments of the audition process, he may have had them. There was one moment where he used the word ‘poop’ during the audition, and there was another where he compared offensive linemen to mushrooms. He was very funny and authentic. There were a few times I told Jay Rothman that there is a bit of [John] Madden there. You can unearth this and somebody will.”

As for what the future holds for Thomas, as far as we know, he is just continuing on with his ThomaHawk podcast for now. But I’m sure he’d love to continue exploring what is next for him in the world of sports media.