NFL
Jim Irsay Makes Good Colts Head Coach Hire, Reveals It in Clownish Way
The Indianapolis Colts head coach search is over. The team is hiring Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen. It’s an excellent hire for Colts owner Jim Irsay (although maybe too similar to his last one). For a while, it looked like Irsay was angling to keep 1-7 interim head coach Jeff Saturday. However, the unpredictable owner called an audible and landed a solid choice for the headset. That’s all great, right up until the point the news broke in the most clownish way possible.
Shane Steichen as Colts head coach came out on Super Bowl Sunday
When Jim Irsay fired Chuck Pagano after the 2017 season, the Colts owner searched for a replacement and landed on Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich. When Reich’s tenure came to an end in 2022, the franchise once again looked to the Super Bowl team and took an Eagles OC.
In between, Irsay made one of the weirdest and most controversial hires of all time. The owner named club legend Jeff Saturday, who was an ESPN analyst at the time, as the boss on the sideline. The inexperience was one issue, and passing up more qualified minority candidates already on staff was another.
However, Irsay marches to the beat of his own drummer and was undeterred.
Saturday won his first game, then promptly dropped seven in a row. During those games, the Colts gave up the third-most points in one quarter in NFL history during a 54-19 loss to the Cowboys. Two weeks later, the Colts jumped out to a 33-0 lead against the Minnesota Vikings and promptly allowed the biggest comeback in NFL history.
Initial rumors during the Colts’ head coach search were that Jim Irsay wanted to find a way to keep Saturday. Eventually, though, common sense gave way, and the owner went in a better direction.
Shane Steichen is an excellent hire. He led the No. 2 scoring offense in the league this season and helped turn quarterback Jalen Hurts from a dicey second-rounder into a legitimate MVP candidate and a Super Bowl signal-caller.
With the Colts drafting fourth in the 2023 NFL Draft, a new QB is on the menu, and Steichen is a perfect coach to develop Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud, or Will Levis.
And if we could just stop there, it would have been awesome. But we can’t.
While the Arizona Cardinals — the only other team without a coach right now — put their coaching search on pause for a weekend while the NFL hosted its flagship event, the Super Bowl, in Arizona, Jim Irsay and the Colts couldn’t do that.
The loose cannon owner either sloppily allowed the news to leak on Super Bowl Sunday or purposefully leaked it to steal some of the spotlight. Either way, it was a clownish move that detracts from the organization and from Steichen, who is about to coach the most important game of his life right now.
But what else do you expect these days from Jim Irsay and the Colts?