Joe Theismann on That Time the Redskins Tried to Sign Andre the Giant

Some stories only get better with a photo, and Joe Theismann brought one that stopped the room cold. The Super Bowl champion and NFL MVP sat down to talk football, then detoured into one of the strangest recruiting pitches in Washington history, the time the franchise tried to sign Andre the Giant.

It started with George Allen's obsession with keeping his team in the headlines during the dead months. "We didn't have football 24/7 like we do now," Theismann explained. So Allen cooked up a plan. He wanted Andre the Giant on the roster for exactly one job. "This was one of George's ploys to come in just to specifically block extra points and field goals. He figured he'd put the big guy in the middle and just let him swat them down."

Theismann flew to New York to meet Andre and shoot the publicity photo that resurfaced on the show, the one that left everyone at the desk gawking. In it, Andre is cradling a grown man like an infant. "He's holding you, Joe, like a baby," Seth Rollins said, comparing it to carrying his own five-year-old daughter, maybe easier. Theismann confirmed the ease of it. "He did it with such ease. He just swooped down, picked me up, and put me in his arms, and started smiling."

His reaction in the moment was pure awe, and one blunt observation. "I said, boy, you got a big head," Theismann recalled. "Everything about him was a giant." He has met plenty of enormous athletes over the years, but none like Andre. "There isn't anybody as big as Andre."

The deal, for the record, ran through the top of the wrestling world. Theismann said Allen got hold of Vince McMahon directly. "George got a hold of Vince McMahon and said, hey, I want to do this. And Vince, obviously the ultimate promoter, said okay, fine, come to New York." That is how the photo came to exist, patchwork leather jacket and all, a jacket Theismann noted he no longer owns and could not fit into anyway.

Rollins, a lifelong wrestling fan turned WWE superstar, could not let the Andre lore pass without honoring the feat that defined it. Theismann agreed, calling Hulk Hogan lifting Andre off the ground one of the great physical accomplishments he has ever seen. "Just to get him off his feet was absolutely incredible."

There was a second big-man story tucked inside the first, and Rollins caught it. Theismann had casually mentioned playing racquetball with Wilt Chamberlain. "When I lived in California, I used to play racquetball with Wilt," Theismann confirmed, then described the futility of it. Chamberlain would simply plant himself in the middle of the court. "You couldn't hit it around him. You couldn't hit it over him. Best thing you could do is hit it at him and hope he didn't hit it back at you."

Theismann framed both encounters as gifts of a long life around remarkable people. He also watched a documentary on Andre and came away thinking about the human cost of that size, the impossibility of sleeping, flying or simply moving through a world not built for him. "When you're that big, life can't be easy," Theismann said. The photo is a laugh. The man behind it, he made clear, was one of one.