Sixteen years after a mic’d up Peyton Manning castigated his star center “Quit calling the (bleeping) plays!,” Jeff Saturday called all the right shots in his successful NFL head coaching debut on the Las Vegas Strip.
That included reinserting Matt Ryan as the Colts’ starting quarterback and elevating assistant QBs coach Parks Frazier to offensive play-caller after his shocking hire as Indy’s interim head coach following Jim Irsay’s firing of Frank Reich last week.
The Colts rallied past the Raiders 25-20 two weeks after Saturday, then an ESPN analyst, tweeted that the “Raiders look horrible.”
Of course, two weeks ago nobody, including Saturday, could have imagined he’d be making his NFL head coaching debut last weekend.
His sole coaching experience had come as head coach of Hebron Christian Academy, a college preparatory school in Georgia, from 2017-2020.
Cutting to the head of the coaching line without any college or pro coaching experience put Saturday in the crosshairs of criticism and dismay across the league.
Two of his harshest critics were former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman Joe Thomas and Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher.
Thomas called Saturday’s hiring a disgrace to the league and its coaches, questioned why Saturday would accept the job at all and ripped Irsay for saying he was glad Saturday lacked NFL head coaching experience because he wouldn’t bring the usual baggage to the position when it comes to crucial in-game decisions.
“When you hire your drinking buddy to be the head coach of an NFL football team, it is one of the most disrespectful things I have ever seen in my entire life to the commitment, the lifestyle and the experience that it takes to be an NFL coach,” Thomas, a 10-time Pro Bowler, said Friday on “Good Morning Football.”
Thomas said being an NFL head coach isn’t “just something you can show up for.”
“So the disrespect NFL coaches have to feel when they saw that this hire was made is higher than almost anything I can possibly remember in the NFL,” Thomas continued. “And then to defend the decision by saying, ‘I’m happy he doesn’t have experience?’”
That was just several steps too far for Thomas.
Cowher didn’t hold back, either.
“It’s a disgrace to the coaching profession,” snarled Cowher on the CBS studio show Sunday where he also called out Saturday for spurning previous overtures from the Colts to serve as an assistant coach because he was working in TV.
Cowher complained that Irsay bypassed members of Reich’s staff who had been there all season, some of whom even have head NFL coaching experience, and deserved the opportunity over Saturday.
