Jeff Saturday wasn’t supposed to be a good interim head coach for Indianapolis Colts. He was supposed to be an unorthodox one.
His 2022 tenure on the sideline of the franchise for whom he’d once played 13 years checked both boxes. He blew massive leads. He called plays and managed clock like a teenager flipping through Madden screens. He beat Josh McDaniels and that’s it, which is a fact that will live inside my brain forever when assessing the Raider head coach.
The chess-not-checkers view was this was all intentional. The Colts needed a franchise quarterback and, after years of failing to find a veteran, understood the only path back to prosperity was the NFL Draft. They’d never get a top five pick with Frank Reich’s competence gumming up the works. Instead they turned to a beloved local figure who hadn’t coached a game above the high school level (and had a losing season his last year doing so).
Saturday accomplished this by losing his final seven games, generally in epic and embarrassing fashion. His job done and the fourth overall pick secured, it seemed like team owner Jim Irsay could send him on his way with a generous severance package and plan for his future.
But Black Monday came and went with no news about Saturday’s future. Then came reports he was still in the running for the permanent job. On Thursday, in the midst of a spinning coaching carousel, the occasionally reliable Jordan Schultz suggested he might actually win the damn thing.
Sources: Jim Irsay’s No. 1 choice for HC remains Jeff Saturday, while others in the #Colts’ front office prefer different leading candidates. Saturday, I’m told, presented his staff choices during his 2nd interview on Wednesday. Irsay has not sat in on most interviews. @theScore https://t.co/lJr3YinQb4
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) January 26, 2023
This would be surprising. And hilarious. The Colts were once a juggernaut in the AFC, making the postseason in 12 of 13 seasons and winning Super Bowl 41. Irsay’s plan to replicate that, if Schultz is to be believed, isn’t to hire an experienced coach with a history of success like he did with Tony Dungy in 2002; it’s to run in opposite direction and hope Dungy’s coaching rubbed off on his former player.
All the evidence we’ve collected to say suggests it has not. In less than half a season as head coach, Saturday has been the architect behind these collapses:
- losing a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter vs. the Philadelphia Eagles
- allowing a 33-point fourth quarter vs. the Dallas Cowboys
- gaining 173 total yards vs. the Los Angeles Chargers
- losing to Lovie Smith and the Houston Texans
He only coached eight games and no fewer than half were abject embarrassments! Four of his seven losses came in games where the Colts led in the fourth quarter. All Saturday has done as an NFL head coach is prove there’s levels to this and that he’s staring up at all of them. This is the guy Irsay allegedly wants in charge of grooming his next young quarterback into a franchise player.
Promoting Saturday to the full-time job would prove his initial placement wasn’t a galaxy-brained attempt to improve draft position but the impulse decision it looked like from the jump. It would suggest merit means nothing in Indianapolis and relationships mean everything. It effectively tells fans to lower their expectations and buckle in for a return to the 1980s when they best they could have hoped for was a one-and-done playoff appearance.
Irsay was around for those days, too. He was the general manager who oversaw Rod Dowhower’s hiring (he went 5-24). He was the guy who fired Ron Meyer in 1991, then let Rick Venturi walk after he went 1-10 as the team’s interim head coach that year. The next man up was Ted Marchibroda, a veteran with NFL coaching experience who led a flawed team to the 1995 AFC title game.
That’s all to say Irsay knows better because he’s been in this situation before. But hiring Saturday in the first place was a defiant move directed as a strike against analytics, the status quo and, as it turned out, competence.
All you critics…you criticize all of us in the NFL for losing…When we make moves to Win… you act so righteous! “Who You Crappin’..”. Just Win,Baby!!🏈✌️
— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) November 14, 2022
Making Saturday his full time coach would double down on that sentiment. It’s a cannon shot he hopes will be loud enough to deafen critics even though the barrel is pointed directly at his own franchise. Jeff Saturday has done nothing to prove he’s a viable NFL head coach aside from be friends with Jim Irsay. If he gets the job, it will be impossible to take the Colts seriously again for a long, long time.
