Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten will be playing in his 16th season in the NFL in 2018. At the age of 35 and with some injury issues in recent years, if he has a down year, it would not be shocking to see him retire. If he does, it sounds like he could have a job waiting for him.
Michael McCarthy of the Sporting News has reported that FOX is interested in bringing on Witten to be a Thursday Night Football analyst.
The 2018 season will be the first year for Thursday Night Football on FOX. The network will pay around $660 million a season to broadcast 11 games on Thursday night. That is a significant increase over the $45 million per game CBS and NBC paid last season.
Both CBS and NBC could have renewed their contracts. But they wanted a lower rights fee to compensate for declining viewer numbers. But with FOX willing to pay more, there was no reason for the NFL to grant their request.
If Witten were to take FOX up on their offer, he'd become the third former Dallas Cowboy in recent memory to take off his helmet and pick up a microphone. Tony Romo became part of the CBS team last season and Troy Aikman has been working games for FOX for years.
Of course, the question will be whether Witten wants to walk away from the game or not. Should the Cowboys make it to the Super Bowl, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him walk away. Doing it after a win would be better, but at his age, just getting there may be enough.
But if he doesn’t make the decision himself, the team could do it for him. At $6.5 million a season, he may be too expensive for a guy that only produced 560 yards and five touchdowns. If he doesn’t play better in 2018, he could become a cap casualty in 2019.
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