Whenever ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast makes its return to the air, Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland will not be on it.
Over the weekend, Richard Deitsch of The Athletic reported Tessitore and McFarland are being removed from the MNF booth but will remain with ESPN in other roles. While it is unclear who exactly their replacements will be, they will come from in-house talent at ESPN, according to Deitsch.
“ESPN is going to have a new Monday Night Football booth. Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland will not return, via sources,” he wrote on Twitter. “The successors will be internal. No decision has been made yet. Both Tessitore and McFarland will remain in prominent roles at ESPN.”
Steve Levy is the favorite to replace Tessitore on play-by-play and analysts Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick and Brian Griese are the favorites to take over for McFarland, according to The New York Post.
Other replacement options include Kurt Warner, Nate Burleson, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit.
The network wanted Tony Romo and has made advances toward Peyton Manning, but neither former quarterback jumped at the chance to join ESPN’s crew. ESPN had wanted to pair Manning with Al Michaels in a revamped MNF booth, but was rejected by the former and unable to work out a trade with NBC to secure the services of the latter.
Regardless of who is calling the games, ESPN’s MNF schedule looks promising, for now.
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