The Indianapolis Colts caused quite an uproar on Monday when they made the shocking decision to hire former Pro Bowl center Jeff Saturday to replace fired head coach Frank Reich despite Saturday having almost no real coaching experience. It was a shocking move, and the Colts got absolutely blasted for it – especially considering they passed up more-qualified Black coaches to hire Saturday.
As NFL and college football writer Richard Johnson points out, the Colts didn’t just pass up on better-qualified coaches around the league, they also passed up on a more-qualified coach on their own coaching staff who was also in the Indianapolis Colts Ring of Honor along with Jeff Saturday: legendary wide receiver Reggie Wayne.
Wayne currently serves as the team’s wide receivers coach, giving him significantly more NFL coaching experience compared to Saturday, who has zero.
In addition to Wayne, Johnson points out that the team also fired Black offensive coordinator Marcus Brady in response to the team’s offensive struggles, even though he didn’t even call plays or run the team’s offense. Johnson believes that Colts owner Jim Irsay fired Brady so that he wouldn’t feel pressure to name him the team’s interim head coach after firing Reich.
“Gee wonder why the Colts fired their promising Black offensive coordinator a couple weeks ago too,” Johnson said on Twitter. “There’s no other way to read the firing of Marcus Brady other than Jim Irsay did it with the Saturday move in mind. You can bypass Gus Bradley and John Fox plausibly, but it would have been (differently) egregious to scoot right past Brady as the NFL pushes diversity at HC hiring.”
This is certainly a bad look for the team, especially after the NFL has recently come under fire with icons like Ladainian Tomlinson, Dennis Thurman, and Tony Dungy detailed struggles as Black coaches in the NFL.
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