The Indianapolis Colts fired head coach and Maryland alum Frank Reich on Monday morning. That the Colts, sitting a 3-5-1 and a 1.5 games behind the first-place Tennessee Titans, fired Reich should not be a surprise.
This, however, was.
Yes, the Indianapolis Colts literally hired a guy off the street to be their head coach. Saturday, who had been an analyst for ESPN and was in Indianapolis yesterday for a Ring of Honor celebration, was apparently in the right place at the right time.
Technically, it’s not entirely true. Most of the coaches in the NFL’s first season did not have any NFL or college experience as a coach. But since then it is virtually unheard of.
Saturday’s coaching experience consists of four years as head coach at Hebron Christian Academy in Dacula, GA. Hardly the kind of resume that gets somebody a look as a position coach in college, much less the NFL. This makes Gerry Faust’s jump from Moeller High School to Notre Dame seem tame in comparison.
What makes Saturday’s selection even more bizarre is the fact that there were coaches on the Colts staff with head coaching experience:
Defensive coordinator Gus Bradley was head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2013-2016
Defensive assistant John Fox coached the Panthers, Broncos and Bills, taking both Carolina and Denver to the Super Bowl.
Scott Milanovich was a head coach in the CFL for both Toronto and Edmonton.
So can anybody really explain why Jeff Saturday walks off the street and gets the job because, presumably, he had the owner’s ear recently? It seems like that cashiering Reich and replacing him with Saturday is the last act of a desperate owner trying to save a season that’s tumbling out of control.1
The NFL is a league where people often think too far inside the box. Teams are often rewarded for thinking outside the box, such as when the Ravens hired John Harbaugh as a special teams coordinator to be their head coach.
With the Colts, this is beyond thinking outside the box. There is no box at all.
The best that I can think of is that Colts leadership is just trying to get through the season and then will do an exhaustive search process. To that end, they would want to give any potential internal candidates a fair shake and not promote one over the other. But even then, you can always promote a candidate who has been part of the team since day one of the season to be the interim. Not to bring in a guy from ESPN who, although respected, has never done any NFL coaching before.
The likelihood that this blows up in the Colts face is extremely high. The learning curve for somebody entering a new situation as a head coach at any level can be steep. Learning at the highest level, in the middle of the season, with expectations that your team is going to make the playoffs seems impossibly steep. I have no idea how anybody can step into this situation and keep their head, much less succeed.2
But if for some reason it does not, that opens up a whole new world of coaching possibilities for NFL teams (and maybe even some college teams) to consider.
Can’t happen to a better group than the Irsays.