The Indianapolis Colts dropped their third straight recreation Sunday, a dismal 26–3 stinker towards the ho-hum New England Patriots, to fall to three–5–1 on the season. The offense, which was rotten crap for six weeks within the fingers of washed-up veteran quarterback Matt Ryan, has produced one landing and simply 5 third-down conversions in two video games with second-year signal-caller Sam Ehlinger beneath heart. Monday the group’s braintrust determined they’d seen sufficient, and fired head coach and offensive play-caller Frank Reich. For what’s shaping as much as be a super-serious second-half push and in no way a humiliating self-directed free fall for draft positioning, the Colts moved shortly to fill their head coach place by hiring Jeff Saturday.
Saturday performed heart for the Colts for 13 years, and thus satisfies the “beloved former player” standards that unhealthy groups typically prioritize when making such a hiring determination. His most up-to-date job earlier than right this moment was as a TV analyst for ESPN.
Instability at quarterback plagued the group throughout Reich’s tenure. In 5 seasons as Indianapolis’s head coach, Reich had 5 completely different opening-day starters on the recreation’s most necessary place. The Colts have been fairly aggressive over that point, and compiled a good if underwhelming 40–33–1 common season file, with a lonely playoff win within the wild card spherical in 2019. This run of respectability was going to finish this season, however at no level previous to this season has Reich’s quarterback scenario been wherever close to as dire. Ehlinger is a former sixth-round choose who took his first snaps in a professional recreation this season, and Ryan is a mummy. Sadly the NFL is just not the form of surroundings the place a coach is allowed to gesture on the deficits of the roster and throw up his fingers, and certainly Reich was nonetheless pulling levers forward of Sunday’s recreation, firing offensive coordinator Marcus Brady following the group’s dispiriting loss to the Commanders in Week 8.
That seems to have been a transfer of some significance, now that Reich is out of the image: In accordance with Adam Schefter, there are actually no coaches left on the Colts workers with any expertise calling performs. This is able to appear to be a really critical deficit for a group that has already had sufficient hassle fielding a purposeful offense, though maybe not past the managerial skills of a veteran head coach, even in an interim capability. Fortunately, Saturday has necessary on-the-job expertise to lean on, from his time as head coach of the Lions, who he led to a few playoff victories and an general profitable file from 2017 to 2020. Sadly, these aren’t the Detroit Lions of the NFL, nor are they the BC Lions of the Canadian Soccer League. Nor even are they the Columbia Lions of the Ivy League. These are the Hebron Christian Academy Lions, of the Georgia Excessive College Affiliation, and Saturday’s transient stint in cost constitutes the whole lot of his teaching résumé. In accordance with Mike Florio, Saturday would be the first NFL head coach in 61 years to take the job with no expertise on the skilled or collegiate degree.
Including to the absurdity of the scenario, the Colts have two former NFL head coaches on their teaching workers in John Fox and Gus Bradley, who now should reply to a man with zero related expertise, who this time final week was dishing takes on ESPN. Saturday’s studying curve will probably be unforgiving: The Colts journey to Las Vegas on Sunday, and should not have their bye till the second week of December. Fortunately, Jim Irsay and Chris Ballard picked simply the appropriate opponent for Saturday’s first huge take a look at:
Good luck, coach!
