Former Colts center Jeff Saturday officially was introduced as interim head coach of the team on Monday night.
There’s a sentence I never dreamed I’d be typing tonight.
Something else Saturday likely didn’t dream he’d be doing tonight is figuring out the identity of the person wo will call the offensive plays for the Colts on Sunday at Las Vegas, in his debut as the head coach. It’s a fairly critical job to the fate of a professional football team.
During an eyebrow-raising press conference that was either foolishly or brilliantly scheduled to happen while a prime-time game was being televised nationally, Saturday explained that he’ll be making the decision as to the person who will call the offensive plays at some point tonight.
“I’ve met with the offensive staff,” Saturday said, “and then already a few guys. And I’ll continue that through the night and come to a conclusion, and we’ll roll from there. . . . There are guys in that offensive room who have called a lot of games and a lot of plays, and there’s a lot of men that have put a lot of time into this. So I have no fear I will pick the right guy, and we will ride with it.”
They’re definitely riding with it. It may be a good ride. It may be a bad ride. But it will absolutely be a ride to remember as Saturday gets thrust into a situation that was bad enough to get the starting quarterback essentially fired one week, the offensive coordinator fired the next week, and the head coach fired seven days after that.
I’ll have other thoughts based on the 35-minute press conference that was dominated by owner Jim Irsay, who has gone in just 20 days from being the toast of the league for daring to publicly say what needed to be said about Commanders owner Daniel Snyder to being a potential laughingstock for making one of the most bizarre in-season decisions the NFL has ever seen.
And that’s not hyperbole. Of all the crazy things the league has witnessed between Week One and the Super Bowl, this is on the short list for the weirdest of all time.
On one hand, I love outside-the-box thinking. On the other hand, there’s a fine line between outside-the-box and just fuckin’ nutty. Over the next nine weeks, we’ll find out where this one lands.